Detection of magnetic circular dichroism using a transmission electron microscope

TLDR: Measurements of electron energy-loss magnetic chiral dichroism with XMCD spectra obtained from the same specimen are compared to show that chiral atomic transitions in a specimen are accessible with inelastic electron scattering under particular scattering conditions, which could have important consequences for the study of magnetism on the nanometre and subnanometre scales.

Abstract: The electron microscope, already a powerful research instrument, could become even more powerful following the discovery that magnetic circular dichroism can be detected with a conventional transmission electron microscope. Materials display magnetic circular dichroism if the absorption of left and right circularly polarized light differs in the presence of an applied magnetic field. Application of this effect using synchrotron X-ray photons is a powerful tool for the investigation of magnetic phenomena. The new technique — EMCD or energy loss magnetic chiral dichroism — exploits the similarities between X-ray absorption and inelastic electron scattering to give a TEM capabilities normally associated with expensive synchrotrons. EMCD could be useful in many fields including spintronics and nanomagnetism. Comparison of measurements of electron energy-loss magnetic chiral dichroism with X-ray magnetic circular dichroism spectra obtained from the same specimen, together with theoretical calculations, show that chiral atomic transitions in a specimen are accessible with inelastic electron scattering under particular scattering conditions. A material is said to exhibit dichroism if its photon absorption spectrum depends on the polarization of the incident radiation. In the case of X-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD), the absorption cross-section of a ferromagnet or a paramagnet in a magnetic field changes when the helicity of a circularly polarized photon is reversed relative to the magnetization direction. Although similarities between X-ray absorption and electron energy-loss spectroscopy in a transmission electron microscope (TEM) have long been recognized, it has been assumed that extending such equivalence to circular dichroism would require the electron beam in the TEM to be spin-polarized. Recently, it was argued on theoretical grounds that this assumption is probably wrong1. Here we report the direct experimental detection of magnetic circular dichroism in a TEM. We compare our measurements of electron energy-loss magnetic chiral dichroism (EMCD) with XMCD spectra obtained from the same specimen that, together with theoretical calculations, show that chiral atomic transitions in a specimen are accessible with inelastic electron scattering under particular scattering conditions. This finding could have important consequences for the study of magnetism on the nanometre and subnanometre scales, as EMCD offers the potential for such spatial resolution down to the nanometre scale while providing depth information—in contrast to X-ray methods, which are mainly surface-sensitive.