Magnetic circular dichroism in Fe 2p resonant photoemission of magnetite

Abstract

Measurements of magnetic circular dichroism in Fe 2p resonant photoemission and calculations based on a full-multiplet cluster model reveal the parameters of the electronic structure of Fe3O4. We obtained on-site Coulomb energy U-dd of 3d electrons, charge-transfer energy Delta which is defined as the energy required to transfer an electron from O 2p to Fe 3d, and the hybridization strength between Fe 3d and O 2p at different Fe ion sites of Fe3O4 by analyzing the data of magnetic circular dichroism. The charge-transfer energy of Fe3+ ions was found to be significantly smaller than that of Fe2+ ions. We determined the energy positions of the low-lying multiplets of each Fe ion site. These energy positions for Fe3+ ion sites are 1.5-2.5 eV higher than those obtained from band-structure calculations. Our calculations also show that the photoemission spectral weight in binding energy bigger than 10 eV is substantial, in contrast to the results of band-structure calculations. Our findings conclude that Fe3O4 is a system with strong electron-electron interactions.