RESEARCH
X-RAY MAGNETIC CIRCULAR DICHROISM
X-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD) can take the advantage of X-ray absorption spectroscopy which can provide the detailed information concerning each element because of its binding energy. Hence, XMCD can detect the magnetic contribution from each element and thus is powerful to investigate magnetic properties of magnetic materials. Moreover, by applying the XMCD sum rules, one could extract orbital and spin magnetic moments from XMCD data owing to the different behaviors of spin and orbital contribution at L3 (J=3/2) and L2 (J=1/2) edges.
X-RAY MAGNETIC LINEAR DICHROISM
XMCD is proportional to the averaged magnetic moment, but for antiferromagnetic systems without net magnetization, other techniques are necessary. On the other hand, X-ray magnetic linear dichroism (XMLD) could probe magnetic asymmetry due to not only ferromagnetic interactions but also antiferromagnetic ones. XMCD is proportional to <M>, while XMLD is strongly related to <M2>. Hence, one could observe strong XMLD in materials with long-range magnetic ordering, ferromagnetic or antiferromagnetic. Moreover, XMLD can determine the antiferromagnetic axis as well as the Neel temperatures of ultra-thin films.