ANISOTROPIC DIELECTRIC RESPONSE OF FERROMAGNETIC COBALT

A self-consistent electronic structure for hexagonal close-packed ferr omagnetic cobalt is obtained through the linear muffin tin orbital (LM TO) method. Using the derived band scheme, the frequency (omega) depen dent dielectric function for the electric field parallel (epsilon(para llel to)) and perpendicular (epsilon(perpendicular to)) to the c-axis for the majority and minority spin bands have been calculated. It is o bserved that the main contribution to the total epsilon(omega) comes f rom the minority spin band, and that epsilon(perpendicular to)(omega) contains more structure than epsilon(parallel to)(omega). These observ ations are rather well confirmed by the experimental results.