AB-INITIO CALCULATION OF QUANTUM-WELL STATES IN CU/CO-(100)

A first-principles calculation of spin-polarized quantum well states within Cu/Co has been performed using a KKR-Green's function method. Results for up to 25 ML Cu and several ML Co are presented, which are in very good agreement with experiments. In addition an important new effect is found arising from the resonant interaction of QW states with size-quantized d-states of the Co layers. This effect leads to branch jumps in the dispersion of the QW states and to a strong reduction of their confinement.