ABSTRACT:

The last two decades have witnessed an explosive growth in the science and technology of thin film and interface magnetism as a result of several revolutionary developments that have advanced the study of artificial magnetic materials: surfaces, interfaces, and superlattices (multilayers). Indeed, magnetism research and its technological applications are in a new golden age of excitement and discovery as a result of advances in ultra-high vacuum synthesis approaches, sophisticated characterization and property measurements--often centered around advanced synchrotron light sources--and development of highly precise computational/theoretical methods. As is well known, first-principle electronic structure studies based on local spin density functional theory, and performed on extremely complex simulations of ever increasingly realistic systems, play a very important role in explaining surface and interface magnetism. Indeed, these advanced computational techniques, combined with existing and new computational power, already provide an understanding of magnetic materials and their properties at the atomic scale with an unprecedented level of detail and accuracy. This talk illustrates several exciting areas addressed recently, including magnetism, magnetic anisotropy, magnetostriction, magneto-optics (MCD and SMOKE), and magneto-transport (i.e., GMR).