Surface and thin film studies with polarized low energy muons

Abstract

Muons with 100% spin polarization and whose energy can be continuously varied in the keV range provide a novel extension of the muon spin rotation/relaxation technique and can be used for surface and thin film studies. They allow depth dependent studies on a nm scale of the magnetic properties of thin films and multilayered structures in the range from about 1 nm to a few 100 nm. After a short introduction about the use of muons as thin film microprobes we summarize some representative examples of applications such as the measurement of magnetic field profiles near the surface of superconductors, the absolute determination of the magnetic penetration depth, and the detection of the oscillating conduction electron spin polarization in multilayered structures.

Keywords:

• Muon spectroscopy
• Thin films
• Magnetic properties
• Multilayered structures

Acknowledgements

This work was performed at the Swiss Muon Source (SμS), Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI, Switzerland). The authors would like to thank H. Keller and J. Litterst for their collaboration and useful discussions.