An Historical Perspective of Key Issues in the Magnetism and Structure of Systems of Reduced Dimensions

Abstract

In this introductory chapter we review some of the key issues in the field of magnetic systems of reduced dimensions in order to obtain an historical perspective for the latest work which is reported in this Volume. The field is relatively young, all of the work having been done during the professional life time of some scientists who are still working in the field. The pace of work has significantly quickened, however, in the last decade. This is due to three converging trends. First, was the development of ultrahigh vacuum (UHV) techniques which permitted the growth of films at the monolayer (ML) level, free of contamination. Second, was the concomitant development of UHV surface analysis techniques to monitor, control and analyze these films. This has more recently been followed by their spin-appended derivations to permit surface magnetism properties to be studied. This dramatic growth of the importance of surface science techniques has drawn into the magnetism community new members from the surface science community, as well as raised the surface science sophistication of the members of the more traditional magnetism world. Finally, the advent of supercomputers and the development of massive new codes has introduced sophisticated first-principals modeling of the electronic structure of magnetic films and surfaces. This not only allows one to understand much of the new experimental work on a very fundamental level, but also generates specific predictions which stimulate new experimental work.