Revealing the Magnetic Structure and Properties of Mn(Co,Ge).

The atomic and magnetic structures of Mn(Co,Ge) are reported herein. The system crystallizes in the space group 6/ as a superstructure of the MgZn-type structure. The system exhibits two magnetic transitions with associated magnetic structures, a ferromagnetic (FM) structure around room temperature, and an incommensurate structure at lower temperatures.

Quantifying Spin-Mixed States in Ferromagnets.

We quantify the presence of spin-mixed states in ferromagnetic 3D transition metals by precise measurement of the orbital moment. While central to phenomena such as Elliot-Yafet scattering, quantification of the spin-mixing parameter has hitherto been confined to theoretical calculations. We demonstrate that this information is also available by experimental means.

Direct light-induced spin transfer between different elements in a spintronic Heusler material via femtosecond laser excitation.

Heusler compounds are exciting materials for future spintronics applications because they display a wide range of tunable electronic and magnetic interactions. Here, we use a femtosecond laser to directly transfer spin polarization from one element to another in a half-metallic Heusler material, CoMnGe. This spin transfer initiates as soon as light is incident on the material, demonstrating spatial transfer of angular momentum between neighboring atomic sites on time scales < 10 fs.

Near-unity spin Hall ratio in Ni Cu alloys.

We report a large spin Hall effect in the 3 transition metal alloy Ni Cu for ∈ {0.3, 0.75}, detected via the ferromagnetic resonance of a permalloy (Py = NiFe) film deposited in a bilayer with the alloy.

Density Functional Theory description of the order-disorder transformation in Fe-Ni.

The thermodynamic ordering transformation of tetragonal FeNi system is investigated by the Exact Muffin-Tin Orbitals (EMTO) method. The tetragonal distortion of the unit cell is taken into account and the free energy is calculated as a function of long-range order and includes the configurational, vibrational, electronic and magnetic contributions. We find that both configurational and vibrational effects are important and that the vibrational effect lowers the predicted transformation temperature by about 480 K compared to the value obtained merely from the configurational free energy.