From the bulk to monatomic wires: An ab-initio study of magnetism in Co systems with various dimensionality

TL;DR

This study uses ab-initio calculations to explore how reducing dimensionality from bulk to monatomic wires affects magnetism and XMCD spectra in cobalt systems, revealing significant orbital moment enhancements and insights into sum rules.

Contribution

It provides a detailed ab-initio analysis of spin and orbital moments and XMCD spectra in low-dimensional Co systems, highlighting the impact of dimensionality and including spin-orbit and orbital polarization effects.

Findings

Orbital moments increase significantly in lower-dimensional Co systems.

XMCD spectra show increased asymmetry between L2 and L3 signals with reduced dimensionality.

The <T_z> term in the spin sum rule is surprisingly small for wires.

Abstract

A systematic ab-initio study within the framework of the local-spin-density approximation including spin-orbit coupling and an orbital-polarization term is performed for the spin and orbital moments and for the X-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD) spectra in hcp Co, in a Pt supported and a free standing Co monolayer, and in a Pt supported and a free standing monatomic Co wire. When including the orbital-polarization term, the orbital moments increase drastically when going to lower dimensionality, and there is an increasing asymmetry between the L_2 and L_3 XMCD signal. It is shown that spin and orbital moments can be obtained with good accuracy from the XMCD spectra via the sum rules. The <T_z> term of the spin sum rule is surprisingly small for the wires, and the reason for this is discussed.