Tunable magnetic relaxation mechanism in magnetic nanoparticles.

We investigate theoretically the magnetization dynamics of a conducting magnetic nanoparticle weakly coupled to source and drain electrodes, under the assumption that all relaxation comes from exchange of electrons with the electrodes. In the regime of sequential tunneling, the magnetization dynamics is characterized by a relaxation time t(1), which strongly depends on temperature, bias voltage, and gate voltage. While a direct measure of a nanoparticle magnetization might be difficult, we find that t(1) can be determined through a time resolved transport measurement. For a suitable choice of gate voltage and bias voltage, the magnetization performs a bias-driven Brownian motion regardless of the presence of anisotropy.