Hyperfine fields and neutron scattering in ferromagnetic metals

Abstract

The origin of ferromagnetism in the transition metal ferromagnets, iron, cobalt, and nickel is discussed, from an ab initio band structure point of view, with proper attention to the explicit roles of exchange, correlation and hybridization effects. The influence of these effects and all the mechanisms such as direct, exchange core polarization and many-body effects that have been found important for the hyperfine properties of atomic systems are included in attempting to understand the experimentally observed hyperfine fields at the nuclei in these metals. Spin-density distributions using calculated spin polarized band wave-functions are used to make comparisons with experimental neutron scattering data. The impact of the results of analyses of hyperfine fields at the nuclei and spin density distributions on the origin of hyperfine fields at muon sites is discussed. This talk, and the corresponding article for the proceedings of this conference, will deal with the theoretical understanding of the hyperfine fields at the nuclei and neutron scattering form factors in the three ferromagnetic metals, iron, cobalt and nickel and the impact of this understanding on that of the origin of the hyperfine fields at positive muon sites in these metals. With these aims in mind, the plan of my talk will be the following.