Magnetic anisotropy variations and nonequilibrium tunneling in a cobalt nanoparticle

Phys Rev Lett. 2001 Nov 26;87(22):226801. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.87.226801. Epub 2001 Nov 7.

Abstract

We present detailed measurements of the discrete electron-tunneling level spectrum within nanometer-scale cobalt particles as a function of magnetic field and gate voltage, in this way probing individual quantum many-body eigenstates inside ferromagnetic samples. Variations among the observed levels indicate that different quantum states within one particle are subject to different magnetic anisotropy energies. Gate-voltage studies demonstrate that the low-energy tunneling spectrum is affected dramatically by the presence of nonequilibrium spin excitations.