TY  - JOUR
AU  - Chaudhary, Gaurav
AU  - dos Santos Dias, Manuel
AU  - MacDonald, Allan H.
AU  - Lounis, Samir
TI  - Anatomy of magnetic anisotropy induced by Rashba spin-orbit interactions
JO  - Physical review / B
VL  - 98
IS  - 13
SN  - 2469-9950
CY  - Woodbury, NY
PB  - Inst.
M1  - FZJ-2018-06333
SP  - 134404
PY  - 2018
AB  - Magnetic anisotropy controls the orientational stability and switching properties of magnetic states, and therefore plays a central role in spintronics. First-principles density functional theory calculations are able, in most cases, to provide a satisfactory description of bulk and interface contributions to the magnetic anisotropy of particular film/substrate combinations. In this paper we focus on achieving a simplified understanding of some trends in interfacial magnetic anisotropy based on a simple tight-binding model for quasiparticle states in a heavy-metal/ferromagnetic-metal bilayer film. We explain how to calculate the magnetic anisotropy energy of this model from the quasiparticle spin susceptibility, compare with more conventional approaches using either a perturbative treatment of spin-orbit interactions or a direct calculation of the dependence of the energy on the orientation of the magnetization, and show that the magnetic anisotropy can be interpreted as a competition between a Fermi sea term favoring perpendicular anisotropy and a Fermi surface term favoring in-plane anisotropy. Based on this finding, we conclude that perpendicular magnetic anisotropy should be expected in an itinerant electron thin film when the spin magnetization density is larger than the product of the band exchange splitting and the Fermi level density of states of the magnetic state.
LB  - PUB:(DE-HGF)16
UR  - <Go to ISI:>//WOS:000446295800001
DO  - DOI:10.1103/PhysRevB.98.134404
UR  - https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/857065
ER  -