Magnetic and electronic properties of bulk and clusters of FePt L1(0).

An efficient tight-binding model including magnetism and spin-orbit interactions is extended to metallic alloys. The tight-binding parameters are determined from a fit to bulk ab initio calculations of each metal and rules are given to obtain the heteroatomic parameters. The spin and orbital magnetic moments as well as the magneto-crystalline anisotropy are derived.

Stability of metal vicinal surfaces revisited.

The stability of metal vicinal surfaces with respect to faceting is investigated using empirical potentials as well as electronic structure calculations. It is proven that for a wide class of empirical potentials all vicinal surfaces between (100) and (111) are unstable at 0 K when the role of third and farther nearest neighbors is negligible. However, electronic structure calculations reveal that the answer concerning the stability of vicinal surfaces is not so clear-cut.