X-ray magneto-optics of lanthanide materials: principles and applications

TL;DR

This paper reviews recent advances in x-ray magneto-optics for lanthanide materials, highlighting their principles, measurement of magneto-optical constants, and applications in analyzing magnetic interfaces and layered structures.

Contribution

It provides new quantitative data on magneto-optical constants of lanthanides and demonstrates their application in studying complex magnetic systems.

Findings

Quantitative determination of magneto-optical constants for lanthanides.

Application of x-ray magneto-optics to analyze magnetic interfaces.

Insights into exchange-coupled layered magnetic structures.

Abstract

Lanthanide metals are a particular class of magnetic materials in which the magnetic moments are carried mainly by the localized electrons of the 4f shell. They are frequently found in technically relevant systems, to achieve, e.g., high magnetic anisotropy. Magneto-optical methods in the x-ray range are well suited to study complex magnetic materials in an element-specific way. In this work, we report on recent progress on the quantitative determination of magneto-optical constants of several lanthanides in the soft x-ray region and we show some examples of applications of magneto-optics to hard-magnetic interfaces and exchange-coupled layered structures containing lanthanide elements.