Element-specific magnetization reversal in Fe/Ce multilayers:: a study by X-ray magnetic circular dichroism and the magneto-optic Kerr effect

Fe/Ce multilayers are magnetically soft with coercive fields of a few Oersteds. In this artificial system, the itinerant 5d electrons of Ce are magnetically polarized by hybridization with the spin-split 3d states of Fe. To obtain an insight into the magnetization reversal process, the element selectivity of X-ray magnetic circular dichroism was used to measure the magnetization of the Ce-Sd electrons as a function of an applied magnetic field. Comparison with the magnetization curves studied by the magneto-optic Kerr effect, which averages over the whole system, revealed that the coercivity in the hysteresis of the ordered Ce-Sd moments is reduced by 50%. We propose that this is an effect of the magnetically disturbed interface or of the complex non-collinear magnetic structure of the Ce layers detected by recent experiments of X-ray resonant magnetic scattering. The results are compared to the X-ray dichroic and Kerr hysteresis loops of the multilayers Fe/La/Ce/La and Fe/CeH2-delta. These systems are magnetically harder and their coercivities are identical. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.