Spin-polarized scanning tunneling microscopy of half-metallic ferromagnets: Non-quasiparticle contributions

The role of the many-body (spin-polaronic) effects in the scanning tunneling spectroscopy of half-metallic ferromagnets (HMF) is considered. It is shown that the non-quasiparticle (NQP) states exist in the majority or minority spin gap in the presence of arbitrary external potential and, in particular, at the surfaces and interfaces. Energy dependence of the NQP density of states is obtained in various models of HMF, an important role of the hybridization nature of the energy gap being demonstrated. The corresponding temperature dependence of spin polarization is calculated. It is shown that the NQP states result in a sharp bias dependence of the tunneling conductance near zero bias. Asymmetry of the NQP states with respect to the Fermi energy provides an opportunity to separate phonon and magnon peaks in the inelastic spectroscopy by STM.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figure

Pseudofermion ferromagnetism in the Kondo lattices: a mean-field approach

Ground state ferromagnetism of the Kondo lattices is investigated within slave fermion approach by Coleman and Andrei within a mean-field approximation in the effective hybridization model. Conditions for formation of both saturated (half-metallic) and non-saturated magnetic state are obtained for various lattices. A description in terms of universal functions which depend only on bare electron density of states (DOS) is presented. A crucial role of the energy dependence of the bare DOS (especially, of DOS peaks) for the small-moment ferromagnetism formation is demonstrated.Comment: Final version, Eur. Phys. J. B, accepte