Magnetic and Magneto-Optical Properties of Interfaces and Superlattices

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Abstract
The ability to study, and to some extent control, the magnetic properties of surfaces and interfaces is an extremely interesting development in the field of magnetism. Along with experimental advances in techniques to accurately prepare magnetic structures by such methods as sputtering and molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) have been theoretical and computational advances in the ability to calculate properties of realistic model systems. At the same time, increasingly sophisticated characterization techniques have become available (e.g., intense synchrotron sources, pulsed sources for magnetic neutron scattering, polarized electron microscopy, scanning tunneling microscopy, etc.), which enable sample characterization at a level not before possible. In recent years, the study of magnetism near surfaces and interfaces has been driven by the observation of significant differences from bulk behavior.1 An understanding of these phenomena is fundamentally important to the field of magnetism and provides the potential for technological applications.2 Although the real situation is more complicated, for the purposes of the discussion here, it is convenient to think about the causes of the observed physical effects at interfaces and in superlattices as falling into two categories: “dimensionality effects,” due to the reduced coordination of the magnetic atoms; and “substrate effects,” due to interactions between the differing materials at an interface. An ultrathin film on an insulator, or the free surface of a bulk crystal, are examples of the first category. However, the magnetic atoms at an interface between two different materials are affected both by the reduced number of similar neighboring atoms (i.e., the dimensionality) and by the crystal and electronic structure of the neighboring layer (i.e., the substrate).