Anisotropy of exchange interactions between impurities on Cu(110) surface

Abstract

We study the exchange interaction between two magnetic impurities on the (110) surface of Cu. We find that the interaction is oscillatory and decays as 1/d2 for large distances d of the impurities. We also show that the oscillations are governed by the Shockley-type surface state around the Ȳ point of the Surface Brillouin zone. The asymmetry of the dispersion of this surface electronic band implies an anisotropic exchange interaction with respect to the relative position of the impurities.