Disentangling electron-boson interactions on the surface of a familiar ferromagnet

Abstract

We report energy renormalizations from electron-phonon and electron-magnon interactions in spin minority surface resonances on Ni(111). The different interactions are identified, disentangled, and quantified from the characteristic signatures they provide to the complex self-energy and the largely different binding energies at which they occur. The observed electron-magnon interactions exhibit a strong dependence on momentum and the electron energy band position in the bulk Brillouin zone. In contrast, electron-phonon interactions observed from the same bands appear to be relatively momentum and symmetry independent. Additionally, a moderately strong (λ>0.5) electron-phonon interaction is distinguished from a near-parabolic spin majority band not crossing the Fermi level.