Thickness-dependent magnetic structure of ultrathin Fe/Ir(001) films: from spin-spiral states towards ferromagnetic order

TL;DR

This study investigates how the magnetic structure of ultrathin Fe films on Ir(001) varies with thickness, revealing a transition from spin-spiral states to ferromagnetic order as layers increase.

Contribution

It provides a detailed theoretical analysis of thickness-dependent magnetic structures in Fe/Ir(001) films using advanced spin modeling techniques.

Findings

Single monolayer Fe is highly affected by layer relaxation and DM interactions.

Two monolayers exhibit a spin spiral ground state due to DM interactions.

Four monolayers show noncollinear magnetization consistent with ferromagnetic order.

Abstract

We present a detailed study of the ground-state magnetic structure of ultrathin Fe films on the surface of fcc Ir(001). We use the spin-cluster expansion technique in combination with the relativistic disordered local moment scheme to obtain parameters of spin models and then determine the favored magnetic structure of the system by means of a mean field approach and atomistic spin dynamics simulations. For the case of a single monolayer of Fe we find that layer relaxations very strongly influence the ground-state spin configurations, whereas Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya (DM) interactions and biquadratic couplings also have remarkable effects. To characterize the latter effect we introduce and analyze spin collinearity maps of the system. While for two monolayers of Fe we find a single-q spin spiral as ground state due to DM interactions, for the case of four monolayers the system shows a noncollinear spin structure with nonzero net magnetization. These findings are consistent with experimental measurements indicating ferromagnetic order in films of four monolayers and thicker.