National Synchrotron Light Source Symposium

I will present some of our current interests in magnetic and electronic structure properties of thin film systems. In particular I will highlight some of our work on magnetic anisotropy and spin-reorientation phenomena in ultra-thin magnetic films, where we recently have derived a generalization to the often-used formula by Bruno that relates magneto-crystalline anisotropy to orbital moment anisotropy. Within this extended model we find that a linear relationship between the two quantities cannot be expected in general.
I will also show how the elemental specificity of soft x-ray synchrotron radiation techniques can be used to explore magnetic properties of tri-layer structures of ultra-thin 3d ferromagnets. Using this unique capability we have found that depending on the precise geometry such tri-layer structures may exhibit quite unexpected magnetic coupling.
Finally I will present some very recent result on the application of high-energy photoelectron spectroscopy, which in combination with first principle electronic structure calculations can be used to obtain detailed information in structural properties of interfaces in, e.g., multilayer structures.