Magnon propagation in a nanometric magnetic cluster chain: Effects of additional clusters near the chain H. Al-Wahsh a , L. Dobrzynski b , B. Djafari-Rouhani b , G. Herna ´ndez-Cocoletzi c , A. Akjouj b, * a Faculty of Engineering, Benha University, 11241 Cairo, Egypt b Institut d’Electronique, de Microe ´lectronique et de Nanotechnologie,UMR CNRS 8520, UFR de Physique, Universite ´ de Lille 1, 59655 Villeneuve d’Ascq Ce ´dex, France c Instituto de Fı ´sica, Universidad Auto ´ noma de Puebla, Apartado Postal J-48, Puebla 72570, Mexico Received 29 May 2006; accepted for publication 9 August 2006 Available online 31 August 2006 Abstract A fundamental understanding of nanoscaled materials has become an important challenge for any technical applications. For mag- netic nanoparticles, the investigations are in particular stimulated by the magnetic storage devices. In this paper we present a theory of the magnon propagation in a nanometric chain and of the effects of neighbor magnetic clusters. We show that with an appropriate choice of the additional clusters, it is possible to control the transmission spectrum of the magnons. The additional clusters can also create a resonator with zero of transmission. This model could be useful to construct device to transmit or stop the magnon signal. Ó 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Surface mode; Magnon; Interface mode; Transmission; Filtering 1. Introduction There is a growing realization of the enormous potential of assemblies of supported nanoclusters in the production of high-performance magnetic materials and devices [1]. As an example, new developments in this area have made possible the preparation of regular arrays of magnetic par- ticles of different shapes and sizes [2–5], which might make possible the production of magnetic storage devices. Regarding magnetic nanoparticles, interest has been fo- cused on the determination of their internal magnetic struc- ture, which is of fundamental importance for practical applications. A new technique was proposed for the inves- tigation of the phase diagrams of nanosized systems [6,7]. This method is based on a scaling relation when starting from the phase diagrams of much smaller systems. On experimental grounds, magnetic force microscopy and magnetization measurements have been used to investigate the arrangement of the magnetic moments within the par- ticles [4,5,8]. The magnetization and resonance frequencies of submicron Fe magnetic dot arrays were investigated by Brillouin light scattering technics and magneto-optic Kerr effects [9]. Brillouin scattering is extensively used to study spin excitations in magnetic systems including nanoarrays [10–13]. Using coherent inelastic light scattering from a microwave-excited array of magnetic particles, Grimsditch et al. have shown that it should be possible to drive specific spin modes into nonlinear regimes [14]. In a recent paper, Rivkin et al. [15] studied theoretically the magnon propagation along linear chain of dipole-cou- pled clusters. The object of this paper is to investigate the magnon propagation in a nanometric magnetic cluster chain and focus on the effects of a few additional clusters near the chain. We take into account the dipole–dipole interactions between the nearest-neighbor cluster local magnetic moments. We show that an appropriate choice of the geometrical or magnetic parameters of the additional 0039-6028/$ - see front matter Ó 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.susc.2006.08.010 * Corresponding author. Tel.: +00 33 3 20 43 68 31. E-mail address: abdellatif.akjouj@univ-lille1.fr (A. Akjouj). www.elsevier.com/locate/susc Surface Science 600 (2006) 4883–4887