2001/02/28 by Stéphane Andrieu, S. Andrieu, Christophe Chatelain +6
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Magnetic Properties and Applications #Magnetic properties of thin films #Theoretical and Computational Physics #cond-mat.mtrl-sci
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.86.3883
published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 86 (2001) 3883 · LaTeX file with Revtex, 5 pages, 5 eps figures, to appear in Phys. Rev. Lett
arxiv created 2001/02/28 · openalex publication_date 2001/04/23 · arxiv updated 2010/07/06 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
In ferromagnetic thin films, the Curie temperature variation with the thickness is always considered as continuous when the thickness is varied from n to n+1 atomic planes. We show that it is not the case for Fe in Fe/Ir superlattices. For an integer number of atomic planes, a unique magnetic transition is observed by susceptibility measurements, whereas two magnetic transitions are observed for fractional numbers of planes. This behavior is attributed to successive transitions of areas with n and n+1 atomic planes, for which the T(c)'s are not the same. Indeed, the magnetic correlation length is presumably shorter than the average size of the terraces. Monte Carlo simulations are performed to support this explanation.