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J. E. Pearson

Publications and source records attributed to J. E. Pearson.

23 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

Suppression of spin-pumping by a MgO tunnel-barrier

Spin-pumping generates pure spin currents in normal metals at the ferromagnet (F)/normal metal (N) interface. The efficiency of spin-pumping is given by the spin mixing conductance, which depends on N and the F/N interface. We directly study the spin-pumping through an MgO tunnel-barrier using the inverse spin Hall effect, which couples spin and charge currents and provides a direct electrical detection of spin currents in the normal metal. We find that spin-pumping is suppressed by the tunnel-barrier, which is contrary to recent studies that suggest that the spin mixing conductance can be enhanced by a tunnel-barrier inserted at the interface.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

Temperature dependent nucleation and annihilation of individual magnetic vortices

We studied the temperature dependence of the magnetization reversal in individual submicron permalloy disks with micro-Hall and bend-resistance magnetometry. The nucleation field exhibits a nonmonotonic dependence with positive and negative slopes at low and high temperatures, respectively, while the annihilation field monotonically decreases with increasing temperature, but with distinctly different slopes at low and high temperatures. Our analysis suggests that at low temperatures vortex nucleation and annihilation proceeds via thermal activation over an energy barrier, while at high temperatures they are governed by a temperature dependence of the saturation magnetization.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

Imaging of lateral spin valves with soft X-ray microscopy

We investigated Co/Cu lateral spin valves by means of high-resolution transmission soft x-ray microscopy with magnetic contrast that utilizes x-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD). No magnetic XMCD contrast was observed at the Cu L$_3$ absorption edge, which should directly image the spin accumulation in Cu. Although electrical transport measurements in a non-local geometry clearly detected the spin accumulation in Cu, which remained unchanged during illumination with circular polarized x-rays at the Co and Cu L$_3$ absorption edges.

cond-mat.other↗

Negative nonlocal resistance in mesoscopic gold Hall bars: Absence of giant spin Hall effect

We report the observation of negative nonlocal resistances in multiterminal mesoscopic gold Hall bar structures whose characteristic dimensions are larger than the electron mean-free path. Our results can only be partially explained by a classical diffusive model of the nonlocal transport, and are not consistent with a recently proposed model based on spin Hall effects. Instead, our analysis suggests that a quasiballistic transport mechanism is responsible for the observed negative nonlocal resistance. Based on the sensitivity of our measurements and the spin Hall effect model, we find an upper limit for the spin Hall angle in gold of 0.022 at 4.5 K.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

Exploring defective eigenvalue problems with the method of lifting

Consider an N x N matrix A for which zero is a defective eigenvalue. In this case, the algebraic multiplicity of the zero eigenvalue is greater than the geometric multiplicity. We show how an inflated (N+1) x (N+1) matrix L can be constructed as a rank one perturbation to A, such that L is singular but no longer defective, and the nullvectors of L can be easily related to the nullvectors of A. The motivation for this construction comes from linear stability analysis of an experimental reaction-diffusion system which exhibits the Turing instability. The utility of this scheme is accurate numerical computation of nullvector(s) corresponding to a defective zero eigenvalue. We show that numerical computations on L yield more accurate eigenvectors than direct computation on A.

math-ph↗