Interlayer exchange in magnetic superlattices.
01 January 1988
A simple model for calculating the RKKY exchange interaction between layers of a magnetic rare earth (RE) metal separated by Yttrium is presented. The calculation is semi-phenomenological and makes use only of previously measured or calculated quantities. It is valid when the thickness of the magnetic RE layers is much smaller than that of the Y layers. The coupling is found to be of fairly long range and to be consistent in sign with the ordering observed in Gd-Y superlattices. For the actual case of comparable layer thicknesses, a discussion of the superlattice wave functions is given. We show that our simple model is very plausible for constituent metals with simple band structures.