INTERLAYER MAGNETIC COUPLING - EFFECT OF INTERFACE ROUGHNESS

The effect of structural interface imperfections on the interlayer mag netic coupling is studied theoretically by considering (i) a macroscop ic model of roughness for possible fluctuations of spacer thickness, a nd (ii) a microscopic model of interdiffusion at ideal interfaces. For the Co/Cu/Co(001) system, we found a dramatic decrease of the amplitu des of the oscillations even for a small amount of interface imperfect ions, particularly strong for the short period oscillations,and thus i ndicating a possible source of discrepancy between ab initio calculati ons and experiment.