Spin-resolved electronic bands of FCT cobalt

Abstract

The understanding ofitinerant ferromagnetism-usually involving a band structure approach-may be put on a broader basis by considering the magnetic properties of the normally inaccessible metastable crystalline phases of Fe, Co and Ni. The authors prepared one of theses systems, namely ferromagnetic FCT cobalt, by epitaxial growth of typically five atomic layers onto carefully characterized Cu(001) surfaces, and mapped the majority and minority spin bands along the surface normal for the first time with spin- and momentum-resolved photoemission with circularly polarized UV synchrotron radiation. The results are compared with two fully relativistic state-of-the-art bulk band structure calculations for FCC Co.