The Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yosida (RKKY) interaction across a tunneling junction out of equilibrium

Abstract

The Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yosida (RKKY) interaction between two magnetic $s$-$d$ spin impurities across a tunneling junction is studied when the system is driven out of equilibrium through biasing the junction. The nonequilibrium situation is handled with the Keldysh time-loop perturbation formalism in conjunction with appropriate coupling methods for tunneling systems due to Caroli and Feuchtwang. We find that the presence of a nonequilibrium bias across the junction leads to an interference of several fundamental oscillations, such that in this tunneling geometry, it is possible to tune the interaction between ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic coupling at a fixed impurity configuration, simply by changing the bias across the junction. Furthermore, it is shown that the range of the RKKY interaction is altered out of equilibrium, such that in particular the interaction energy between two slabs of spins scales extensively with the thickness of the slabs in the presence of an applied bias.