First-principles analysis of X-ray magnetic circular dichroism for transition metal complex oxides

X-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD) is widely used for the characterization of magnetism of materials. However, information from XMCD related to the atomic, electronic, and magnetic structures is not fully utilized due to the lack of reliable theoretical tools for spectral analysis. In this work, the first-principles configuration interaction (CI) calculations for X-ray absorption spectra developed by the author were extended for the calculation of XMCD, where the Zeeman energy was taken into the Hamiltonian of the CI to mimic magnetic polarization in the solid state. This technique was applied to interpret the L-2,L-3 XMCD from 3d transition metal complex oxides, such as NiFe2O4 and FeTiO3. The experimental XMCD spectra were quantitatively reproduced using this method. The oxidation states as well as the magnetic ordering between transition metal ions on crystallographically different sites in NiFe2O4 can be unambiguously determined. A first-principles analysis of XMCD in FeTiO3 revealed the presence of Fe3+ and Ti3+ ions, which indicates that the charge transfer from Fe to Ti ions occurs. The origin of magnetic polarization of Ti ions in FeTiO3 was also discussed. Published by AIP Publishing.