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Antiferromagnets are often used only for their resilience to external magnetic fields and appear ill-suited for use as active elements in spintronic devices. But when shrunk to nanometer dimensions antiferromagnets gain in functionality. We use low-temperature scanning tunneling microscopy to create small antiferromagnets of our own design atom by atom. At this extreme scale of individual atoms we can begin to harness quantum mechanical effects. In this way we can build antiferromagnetic nanostructures that show two stable magnetic states with no net magnetic moment or structures that have a unique ground state but feature rich magnetic dynamics of their excited states. I will introduce how inter-atomic exchange bias gives control over the spin ground state and excitation dynamics of antiferromagnets and demonstrate how coupling to the dissipative environment can be used to stabilize spins.

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Sebastian Loth, MPI
Seminar room of the Institute of Physics II
Contact: Thomas Michely