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Wednesday, 07 February 2007 |
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Spin@RT will focus on four interconnected themes of research. The first is to develop coherent quantum nanostructures with energy barriers engineered to generate and manipulate coherent spin currents, a development of the more usual magnetic tunnel junction structure. The second aims to gain a better basic understanding of the way that spin-polarised currents of electrons propagate and lose their spin information. This will use cutting-edge x-ray and neutron techniques, sensitive to magnetism, at international facilities around the world. The remaining two themes are closely related and concern new physics discovered only in the last few years. It has been found that at high densities the spin-polarization of a current can cause changes in the magnetic state of a system - this is a quantum effect that goes beyond the usual classical field effects described by the Maxwell equations. The aims of these two themes are to study and optimise these effects in multilayer nanopillar and domain wall geometries. The effect has numerous potential applications, from writing data in non-volatile magnetic memories to novel radio frequency components.
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Research 
