The empirical Monod-Beuneu relation of spin-relaxation revisited for elemental metals

Szolnoki, Lénárd and Kiss, Annamária and Forró, L. and Simon, Ferenc (2014) The empirical Monod-Beuneu relation of spin-relaxation revisited for elemental metals. PHYSICAL REVIEW B, 89 (11). ISSN 2469-9950

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Abstract

Monod and Beuneu [Monod and Beuneu, Phys. Rev. B 19, 911 (1979)] established the validity of the Elliott- Yafet theory for elemental metals through correlating the experimental electron spin resonance line-width with the so-called spin-orbit admixture coefficients and the momentum-relaxation theory. The spin-orbit admixture coefficients data were based on atomic spin-orbit splitting. We highlight two shortcomings of the previous description: i) the momentum-relaxation involves the Debye temperature and the electron-phonon coupling whose variation among the elemental metals was neglected, ii) the Elliott-Yafet theory involves matrix elements of the spin-orbit coupling (SOC), which are however not identical to the SOC induced energy splitting of the atomic levels, even though the two have similar magnitudes. We obtain the empirical spin-orbit admixture parameters for the alkali metals by considering the proper description of the momentum relaxation theory. In addition, we present a model calculation which highlights the difference between the SOC matrix element and energy splitting.

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