Circular magnetic x-ray dichroism in rare-earth magnets

Abstract

With the availability of dedicated high-intensity synchrotron radiation sources, circular magnetic x-ray dichroism (CMXD) is developing as a technique for the investigation of magnetic properties. CMXD is defined as the difference in absorption between right and left circularly polarized beams at an absorption edge and provides information about the local (element and angular momentum specific) spin and orbital magnetic moments. Both theoretical and experimental work on the CMXD spectra of rare-earth magnets is presented. The nature of the feature below the absorption edge in the rare-earth CMXD spectra for the L2 and L3 edges is discussed.