THE INTERLAYER EXCHANGE COUPLING IN MAGNETIC MULTILAYERS - THE EFFECT OF THE THICKNESS OF THE FERROMAGNETIC LAYER

In this work the effect of the ferromagnetic layer thickness on the interlayer exchange coupling in magnetic multilayers, which has rarely been considered so far, is investigated by employing the one-band tight-binding hole-confinement model. The numerical calculations for a simple cubic lattice show that although the oscillatory variation of coupling parameter J with the variation of non-magnetic layer thickness N has periods insensitive to the ferromagnetic layer thickness M, when M becomes smaller the amplitude and phase of such oscillations depend strongly on M, and J varies with M in an oscillatory-like fashion. Our theoretical results may be helpful in understanding the recent experimental data.