SURFACE SPIN-FLOP TRANSITION IN FE CR(211) SUPERLATTICES - EXPERIMENTAND THEORY/

We report experimental and theoretical studies of the magnetization cu rves of Fe/Cr(211) superlattices with antiferromagnetic interlayer cou pling and uniaxial in-plane anisotropy. There are substantial differen ces between structures with an even and an odd number of Fe layers, wh en the magnetic field is applied along the easy axis. For even layered superlattices, the inequivalence of the terminal Fe layers gives rise to a surface spin-flop transition that evolves into a bulk spin-flop arrangement with increasing magnetic field, as originally envisioned b y Keffer and Chow [Phys. Rev. Lett. 31, 1061 (1973)].