Related Experiment Videos
Direct observation of orbital magnetism in cubic solids
1Institut für Experimentalphysik, Freie Universität Berlin, Arnimallee 14, D-14195 Berlin-Dahlem, Germany. brewer@physik.fu-berlin.de
Physical Review Letters
|August 25, 2004
Abstract:
We present x-ray magnetic circular dichroism determinations of the orbital/spin magnetic moment ratios of dilute 3d-series impurities in Au (and Cu) host matrices. This is the first direct measurement of considerable orbital moments in cubic symmetry for a localized impurity in a bulk metal host. It is shown that the unquenching of orbital magnetism depends on a delicate balance of hybridization effects between the local impurity with the host and the filling of the 3d states of the impurity. The results are accompanied by ab initio calculations that support our experimental findings.