Calculation of magnetic anisotropy energy in YCo5

Previous calculations of the magnetic anisotropy of YCo5 found values of about 0.6 meV/f.u. compared to the experimental value of 3.8 meV/f.u. These were all performed using LDA with and without including nonspherical corrections. We have applied GGA including non-spherical and relativistic P-1/2 corrections which results in the magnetic anisotropy energy to be 1.4 meV/f.u. This means a smaller than previously assumed portion of the magnetic anisotropy comes from orbital polarization and similar effects beyond density functional theory. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.