Electronic band structure information of GdN extracted from x-ray absorption and emission spectroscopy

Abstract

The electronic structure of GdN films grown by pulsed laser deposition has been investigated by soft x-ray absorption (XAS) and x-ray emission spectroscopy (XES) at the N K-edge. Density functional calculations within the local spin density approximation with Hubbard-U corrections of the N p weighted bands and density of states are used to extract band information from the spectra. Gd M4,5 XAS and XES spectra are also presented. The XES-XAS separation is shown to give information on the f-band spin splitting and the XAS line shapes are shown to reflect atomic multiplet effects.