Point contact spectroscopy of g-values in metals

Abstract

It has previously been demonstrated that the I-V characteristic associated with current flow through a constriction whose dimension is less than the electron mean free path is nonlinear. The nonlinearity is largely associated with electron-phonon scattering. We have analyzed the case in which the contacts contain localized impurity spins. We show that, in the presence of an applied magnetic field, the inelastic spin-flip, scattering should be readily observable in the I-V characteristic, thereby providing an alternative technique for obtaining g values of localized spins in metals.