On the origin of temperature dependence of interlayer exchange coupling in metallic trilayers

TL;DR

This paper investigates how collective magnetic excitations influence the temperature dependence of interlayer exchange coupling in metallic trilayers, comparing different models and proposing experiments to identify the dominant mechanism.

Contribution

It introduces a comparative analysis of models explaining temperature effects on IEC and suggests experimental methods to determine the primary mechanism.

Findings

Reduction of IEC with temperature is similar across models

Spacer thickness and material significantly affect IEC behavior

Proposed experiments can distinguish between different mechanisms

Abstract

We study the influence of collective magnetic excitations on the interlayer exchange coupling (IEC) in metallic multilayers. The results are compared to other models that explain the temperature dependence of the IEC by mechanisms within the spacer or at the interfaces of the multilayers. As a main result we find that the reduction of the IEC with temperature shows practically the same functional dendence in all models. On the other hand the influence of the spacer thickness, the magnetic material, and an external field are quite different. Based on these considerations we propose experiments, that are able to determine the dominating mechanism that reduces the IEC at finite temperatures.