Magnetic dichroisms in absorption and photoemission for magnetic characterization in x-ray photoelectron emission microscopy

Abstract

Magnetic contrast for the operation of a photoelectron emission microscope (PEEM) with synchrotron radiation is provided by magnetic dichroisms. Besides the most frequently employed magnetic dichroism, magnetic circular dichroism in x-ray absorption spectroscopy, energy filtering of photoemitted electrons allows one to also use magnetic dichroisms in photoelectron emission as complementary contrast mechanisms. We demonstrate that it is possible to obtain magnetic contrast in photoemission using PEEM equipped with a simple retarding field electron energy analyzer. Magnetic domain images of an ultrathin film of 10 atomic monolayers of Fe on W(001), obtained by three different contrast mechanisms (circular magnetic dichroism in x-ray absorption, circular magnetic dichroism in Fe valence band photoemission, and linear magnetic dichroism in Fe 3p photoemission) are presented and compared.