Spin vibronics in interacting nonmagnetic molecular nanojunctions

Abstract

We show that in the presence of ferromagnetic electronic reservoirs and spin-dependent tunnel couplings, molecular vibrations in nonmagnetic single molecular transistors induce an effective intramolecular exchange magnetic field. It generates a finite spin accumulation and precession for the electrons confined on the molecular bridge and occurs under (non)equilibrium conditions. The effective exchange magnetic field is calculated here to lowest order in the tunnel coupling for a nonequilibrium transport setup. Coulomb interaction between electrons is taken into account as well as a finite electron-phonon coupling. We show that for realistic physical parameters, an effective spin-phonon coupling emerges. It is induced by quantum many-body interactions, which are either of electron-phonon or Coulomb type. We investigate the precession and accumulation of the confined spins as function of bias and gate voltages as well as their dependence on the angle enclosed by the magnetizations between the left and right reservoir.