Magnetism, magneto-crystalline anisotropy, magnetostriction and MOKE at surfaces and interfaces

A major issue for first-principles theory in magnetism is the treatment of the weak spin-orbit coupling (SOC) and its subsequent effects in magnetic t ransition metal bulk, surfaces and multilayers. Using either a perturbative or a self-consistent approach for SOC, we have recently investigated impor tant phenomena such as magnetic crystalline anisotropy (MCA), magnetostrict ion, and magneto-optical Kerr effects (MOKE) in various transition metal sy stems using the highly precise local density full-potential linearized augm ented plane wave (FLAPW) method. With the aid of accurate total energy and atomic force approaches based on the LDA and GGA formalisms, the atomic str uctures of all the surfaces and interfaces are fully relaxed. Excellent agr eement with experiment has been achieved for most of the systems investigat ed in terms of their equilibrium geometries, MCA energies, magnetostrictive coefficients and MOKE spectra. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights r eserved.