Jal, E., Dabrowski, M., Tonnerre, J. M., Przybylski, M., Grenier, S., Jaouen, N., Kirschner, J.
Noncollinearity of the canted spins across ultrathin Fe films on vicinal Ag surfaces
Physical Review B 91, (21),pp 214418/1-8 (2015)
We investigate the depth dependence of the canted magnetization in a bcc Fe ultrathin film grown on a vicinal Ag substrate. This study is performed for different Fe thicknesses, in the vicinity of the spin reorientation transition, by soft x-ray resonant magnetic reflectivity (SXRMR). Above 5.5 monolayers, the high spatial resolution of SXRMR allows us to describe a gradient of the canted magnetization. The tilt angle is larger near the Ag interface and decreases towards the surface. This noncollinearity is ascribed to a different balance of various anisotropies across the layer thickness. Below that value, a large increase of the tilt angle is observed and ascribed to the spin reorientation transition. Unlike the previous situation, the tilt angle is found to be homogeneous throughout the film. This can be related either to the out-of-plane spin reorientation associated to a reduced number of monolayers or to the q-space limitation of the SXRMR technique at the Fe L3 edge.