Abstract
The magnetic circular dichroism (MCD) of core-level absorption (x-ray absorption spectroscopy, XAS) spectra in the soft x-ray region has been measured for the ferromagnetic Heusler alloy ${\mathrm{Co}}_{2}{\mathrm{Cr}}_{0.6}{\mathrm{Fe}}_{0.4}\mathrm{Al}$ at the Co, Fe, and Cr ${L}_{II,III}$ edges. The comparison of XAS spectra before and after in situ cleaning of polished surfaces revealed a pronounced selective oxidation of Cr in air. For clean surfaces we observed a MCD for all three elements with Fe showing the largest moment per atom. The MCD can be explained by the density of states of the $3d$ unoccupied states, predicted by linear muffin-tin orbital atomic sphere approximation. For Fe and Cr the orbital angular momentum component of the magnetic moment is considerably larger than the values reported for metallic alloys, whereas for Co a value close to its bulk value is observed. This observation is discussed in comparison with band structure calculations.
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