Spin exchange between ion probes and localized moments in ferromagnets as the origin of transient fields.

Abstract

The transient field phenomenon has been ascribed to a polarization transfer between the electrons of the ionic projectiles and the surplus of majority spin electrons of the ferromagnetic host over the minority spin electrons. Earlier attempts to explain this crucial process failed to account for the order of magnitude of the experimentally observed transient field strengths. A recent model which proposes spin exchange scattering between bound projectile electrons and quasifree host electrons as the mechanism of polarization transfer arrives at the correct orders of magnitude but is in conflict with the weak velocity dependence of the experimental polarization, exhibiting a strongly decreasing behavior with increasing velocity. The new model presented here proposes spin exchange between the ionic shell and localized electrons of the ferromagnet as a more adequate approach to the problem. It is shown that calculations involving hydrogenlike ions explain the size of the experimentally observed polarization effects as well as their velocity dependence for various ion probes traversing thin iron foils.