STRUCTURAL AND MAGNETIC-ANISOTROPY OF TB FE MULTILAYERS/

Local structural anisotropy of Tb/Fe multilayers (MLs) was investigate d by extended X-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS) spectroscopy. Qu antitative analysis of Fe EXAFS signals was performed to estimate the coordination number related to the structural anisotropy. A difference in the Fourier-transformed Fe EXAFS spectra between two incident pola rized light directions has indicated that considerable anisotropy of a tomic pair ordering exists in the MLs prepared by sputtering. It was f urther found that the variation of the structural anisotropy well corr esponds to the magnitude of the perpendicular magnetic anisotropy; whi ch changes depending on the bilayer periods and the preparation condit ion.