Theory of polarized electron beam production by field emission from ferromagnets

Abstract

A theory is given for field emission from ferromagnetic solids in which the two spin subbands of the conduction band are split by exchange forces. Using a simple plane wave model for the conduction band states it is shown that the familiar WKB approximation for the tunneling probability has to be improved by momentum dependent factors to account for the spin polarization of the emission current observed in a recent experiment which is 8% in the case of Gd. The calculations are extended to describe emission from Bloch states. Applications of the theory to various ferromagnetic systems are discussed, the use of ferromagnetic Eu_1−xGd_xS as a source for highly polarized beams is suggested.