TY - JOUR
T1 - Mechanism of uniaxial magnetocrystalline anisotropy in transition metal alloys
AU - Kota, Yohei
AU - Sakuma, Akimasa
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors are grateful to Emeritus Professor Takeshi Watanabe for encouragement during their study. One of the authors (Y.K.) was supported by a Grant-in-Aid for the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Fellows.
Publisher Copyright:
©2014 The Physical Society of Japan.
PY - 2014/3/15
Y1 - 2014/3/15
N2 - Magnetocrystalline anisotropy in transition metal alloys (FePt, CoPt, FePd, MnAl, MnGa, and FeCo) was studied using first-principles calculations to elucidate its specific mechanism. The tight-binding linear muffin-tin orbital method in the local spin-density approximation was employed to calculate the electronic structure of each compound, and the anisotropy energy was evaluated using the magnetic force theorem and the second-order perturbation theory in terms of spin-orbit interactions. We systematically describe the mechanism of uniaxial magnetocrystalline anisotropy in real materials and present the conditions under which the anisotropy energy can be increased. The large magnetocrystalline anisotropy energy in FePt and CoPt arises from the strong spin-orbit interaction of Pt. In contrast, even though the spin-orbit interaction in MnAl, MnGa, and FeCo is weak, the anisotropy energies of these compounds are comparable to that of FePd. We found that MnAl, MnGa, and FeCo have an electronic structure that is efficient in inducing the magnetocrystalline anisotropy in terms of the selection rule of spin-orbit interaction.
AB - Magnetocrystalline anisotropy in transition metal alloys (FePt, CoPt, FePd, MnAl, MnGa, and FeCo) was studied using first-principles calculations to elucidate its specific mechanism. The tight-binding linear muffin-tin orbital method in the local spin-density approximation was employed to calculate the electronic structure of each compound, and the anisotropy energy was evaluated using the magnetic force theorem and the second-order perturbation theory in terms of spin-orbit interactions. We systematically describe the mechanism of uniaxial magnetocrystalline anisotropy in real materials and present the conditions under which the anisotropy energy can be increased. The large magnetocrystalline anisotropy energy in FePt and CoPt arises from the strong spin-orbit interaction of Pt. In contrast, even though the spin-orbit interaction in MnAl, MnGa, and FeCo is weak, the anisotropy energies of these compounds are comparable to that of FePd. We found that MnAl, MnGa, and FeCo have an electronic structure that is efficient in inducing the magnetocrystalline anisotropy in terms of the selection rule of spin-orbit interaction.
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U2 - 10.7566/JPSJ.83.034715
DO - 10.7566/JPSJ.83.034715
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84903978745
VL - 83
JO - Journal of the Physical Society of Japan
JF - Journal of the Physical Society of Japan
SN - 0031-9015
IS - 3
M1 - 034715
ER -