Spin amplification, reading, and writing in transport through anisotropic magnetic molecules

Abstract

Inelastic transport through a single magnetic molecule weakly coupled to metallic leads is studied theoretically. We consider dynamical processes that are relevant for writing, storing, and reading spin information in molecular memory devices. Magnetic anisotropy is found to be crucial for slow spin relaxation. In the presence of anisotropy we find giant spin amplification: The spin accumulated in the leads if a bias voltage is applied to a molecule prepared in a spin-polarized state can be made exponentially large in a characteristic energy divided by temperature. For one ferromagnetic and one paramagnetic lead the molecular spin can be reversed by applying a bias voltage even in the absence of a magnetic field. We propose schemes for reading and writing spin information based on our findings.