Figure 4. Impact of the surface oxidation on the magnetic interactions in Fe/Ir(001).
(a) The isotropic exchange-interaction energy E0(q′), (b) the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction energy ΔEDM(q′) for O/Fe/Ir(001) as a function of oxygen coverage Θ varying between 0 and 1 ML. The results shown in (a) are obtained without SOC. (b) The slope of this odd part at E(q′) = 0 determines the sign and magnitude of DMI. The green and yellow lines for 0.5 ML correspond to () and (
) directions, while black and gray lines for 0 ML correspond to (
) and (
), respectively.