Many-body and spin-dependent surface potential effects in spin-polarized field emission from metals

Abstract

A spin-dependent generalization of the Appelbaum-Brinkman transfer-Hamiltonian method is used to develop a practical formalism for including many-body and spin-dependent surface-potential effects in the calculation of the field-emitted current from a ferromagnet. It is shown that this formalism reduces to that of Politzer and Cutler when many-body effects, the spin dependence of the surface potential, and the detailed position dependence of the surface potential are neglected. If, finally, the band structure is treated in the nearly-free-electron limit, the theory reduces to that of Chazalviel and Yafet.