Abstract
We report a theoretical investigation of new spin slips phases of thin holmium (Ho) films. The new phases originate from the loss of coordination of atoms in the near surface region, which affects the balance between exchange and anisotropy energies, favoring the alignment of near surface spins along the basal plane easy axis directions.
Highlights
Rare-earth (RE) elements have a rich variety of periodic magnetic phases, induced either by external magnetic fields or by temperature
As a result confinement effects are likely to be stronger for thin RE films thicknesses of the order of the helix period.[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]
There is a good deal of theoretical work on the dramatic changes in the magnetic phases of thin Ho films for thicknesses close to and smaller than the helix period.[7,8,9]
Summary
The stability of the commensurate phases depends on how well the gain in anisotropy energy, with spins locked to near easy axis directions in the basal plane, counter-balances the increase in the exchange energy. The exchange energy balance is changed in favor of parallel orientation of near surface spins.[2,4,5,6] We show presently that this may affect the commensurate phases of Ho. In this paper, we report a theoretical study of surface and confinement effects on the commensurate phases of Ho at low temperatures.
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