Spin polarized photoemission studies of surfaces and thin films

This paper discusses spin polarized photoemission which is used to study the magnetic states associated with the clean iron surface. THese studies reveal evidence for a minority spin surface state in agreement with a first principles calculation. Studies of the same surface with silver and chromium epitaxial overlayers reveal evidence for interface states derived from this state found on the clean surface. In the case of the silver overlayer the binding energy of the new state is found to be dependent on the layer by layer thickness of the overlayer. With chromium overlayers the binding energy for the same interface state does not show the same thickness dependence. However a second interface state is observed immediately below the Fermi level. These changes in the interfacial electronic structure have implications for any modelling of magnetic coupling in multilayers dependent on the magnetic properties of the interface