Detecting halfmetallic electronic structures of spintronic materials in a magnetic field

磁場中でのスピントロニクス材料のハーフメタル電子状態の検出

藤原 秀紀*; 梅津 理恵*; 黒田 文彬*; 宮脇 淳*; 樫内 利幸*; 西本 幸平*; 永井 浩大*; 関山 明*; 入澤 明典*; 竹田 幸治   ; 斎藤 祐児  ; 小口 多美夫*; 原田 慈久*; 菅 滋正*

Fujiwara, Hidenori*; Umetsu, Rie*; Kuroda, Fumiaki*; Miyawaki, Jun*; Kashiuchi, Toshiyuki*; Nishimoto, Kohei*; Nagai, Kodai*; Sekiyama, Akira*; Irizawa, Akinori*; Takeda, Yukiharu; Saito, Yuji; Oguchi, Tamio*; Harada, Yoshihisa*; Suga, Shigemasa*

Band-gap engineering is one of the fundamental techniques in semiconductor technology. To fully utilize the spintronic material, it is essential to optimize the spin-dependent electronic structure in operando conditions by applying the magnetic and/or electric fields. Here we present a new spectroscopic technique to probe the spin-polarized electronic structures by using magnetic circular dichroism (MCD) in resonant inelastic soft X-ray scattering (RIXS) under an external magnetic field. Thanks to the spin-selective dipole-allowed transitions in the RIXS-MCD, we have successfully demonstrated the direct evidence of the perfectly spin-polarized electronic structures for the prototypical halfmetallic Heusller alloy, CoMnSi. The RIXS-MCD is a promising tool to probe the spin-dependent carriers and band-gap with element specific way induced in buried magnetic layers under operando conditions.