Magnetic coupling at ferromagnetic rare earth / transition-metal interfaces: A comprehensive study
Abstract
Thin film magnetic heterostructures with competing interfacial coupling and Zeeman energy pro- vide a fertile ground to study phase transition between different equilibrium states as a function of external magnetic field and temperature. A rare-earth (RE) / transition metal (TM) ferro- magnetic multilayer is a classic example where the magnetic state is determined by a competition between the Zeeman energy and antiferromagnetic interfacial exchange coupling energy. Techno- logically, such structures offer the possibility to engineer the macroscopic magnetic response by tuning the microscopic interactions between the layers. We have performed an exhaustive study of a nickel/gadolinium system by using the element-specific measurement technique x-ray magnetic circular dichroism, and determined the full magnetic state diagrams as a function of temperature and magnetic layer thickness. We explain our result based on a modified Stoner-Wohlfarth formal- ism and provide evidence of a thickness-dependent phase transition to a magnetic fan state which is critical in understanding magnetoresistance effects in RE/TM systems. The results provide im- portant insight for spintronics and superconducting spintronics where engineering tunable magnetic inhomogeneity is key for certain applications.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1505.05864,
title = {Magnetic coupling at ferromagnetic rare earth / transition-metal interfaces: A comprehensive study},
author = {T. D. C. Higgs and S. Bonetti and H. Ohldag and N. Banerjee and X. L. Wang and A. Rosenberg and Z. Cai and J. H. Zhao and K. A. Moler and J. W. A. Robinson},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1505.05864},
year = {2017}
}