Interlayer Exchange Coupling: Effect of Alloying

J. Kudrnovskýa,b, V. Drchala,b, I. Turekc, M. Šobc and P. Weinbergerb aInstitute of Physics, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Na Slovance 2, 180 40 Praha 8, Czech Republic bInstitute for Technical Electrochemistry, Technical University of Vienna, Getreidemarkt 9, 1060 Vienna, Austria cInstitute of Physics of Materials, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Žižkova 22, 616 62 Brno, Czech Republic

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The effect of disorder in magnetic layers, in the spacer, and at interfaces between them on periods, amplitudes, and phases of oscillations of interlayer exchange coupling in magnetic multilayers is studied theoretically on the ab initio level. We employ the spin-polarized surface Green function technique within the tight-binding linear muffin-tin orbital method and the Lloyd formulation of the interlayer exchange coupling. The coherent potential approximation is used to describe the effect of alloying. The calculations are significantly simplified by employing the vertex-cancellation theorem. Numerical results illustrating the effect of various kinds of disorder in the system on the properties of the interlayer exchange coupling are presented.

DOI: 10.12693/APhysPolA.91.15 PACS numbers: 75.70.Cn, 75.30.Et