Oscillations of the Orbital Magnetic Moment due to $d$-Band Quantum Well States

Oscillations of the Orbital Magnetic Moment due to $d$ -Band Quantum Well States

M. Dąbrowski, T. R. F. Peixoto, M. Pazgan, A. Winkelmann, M. Cinal, T. Nakagawa, Y. Takagi, T. Yokoyama, F. Bisio, U. Bauer, F. Yildiz, M. Przybylski, and J. Kirschner

Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 067203 – Published 6 August 2014

Abstract

The effect of electron confinement on the magnetocrystalline anisotropy of ultrathin bcc Fe films is explored by combining photoemission spectroscopy, x-ray magnetic circular dichroism, and magneto-optical Kerr effect measurements. Pronounced thickness-dependent variations in the magnetocrystalline anisotropy are ascribed to periodic changes in the density of states at the Fermi level, induced by quantization of $d_{x z}$ , $d_{y z}$ out-of-plane orbitals. Our results reveal a direct correlation between quantum well states, the orbital magnetic moment, and the magnetocrystalline anisotropy.

Received 7 February 2014

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.113.067203

Authors & Affiliations

M. Dąbrowski^1,*, T. R. F. Peixoto¹, M. Pazgan¹, A. Winkelmann¹, M. Cinal², T. Nakagawa³, Y. Takagi³, T. Yokoyama³, F. Bisio⁴, U. Bauer¹, F. Yildiz¹, M. Przybylski^1,5, and J. Kirschner^1,6

¹Max-Planck-Institut für Mikrostrukturphysik, 06120 Halle, Germany
²Institute of Physical Chemistry, Polish Academy of Sciences, 01-224 Warsaw, Poland
³Institute for Molecular Science, Myodaiji-cho, Okazaki, Aichi 444-8585, Japan
⁴CNR-SPIN Corso Perrone 24, I-16152 Genova, Italy
⁵Faculty of Physics and Applied Computer Science, and Academic Centre for Materials and Nanotechnology, AGH University of Science and Technology, 30-059 Kraków, Poland
⁶Naturwissenschaftliche Fakultät II, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, 06120 Halle, Germany

^*Present address: Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15260, USA. mdabrows@mpi-halle.de

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Vol. 113, Iss. 6 — 8 August 2014

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