Electron spin-flip relaxation by one magnon processes: Application to the gadolinium surface band - art. no. 214410

The "s-f model," also known as the ferromagnetic Kondo lattice, contains a description of band electrons coupled to localized spins that is an appropr iate description of the magnetic part of the low-energy physics of Gd metal . Here the model is used to estimate the lifetime broadening of the minorit y-spin component of the surface-electron band in ferromagnetic gadolinium m etal at temperatures below the Curie temperature. The low-temperature resul t 1/tau approximate to0.1 eV agrees nicely with a measurement by Fedorov et al.