First principles calculations of intersite disorder influence on the electronic structure and X-ray magnetic circular dichroism in CoFeMnSi Heusler alloy

Electronic structure, X-ray absorption, and magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD) spectra in the CoFeMnSi Heusler alloy were studied from first principles. Fully relativistic Dirac linear muffin-tin orbital band structure method was implemented with various exchange–correlation functionals tested. The supercell approach was used to study the influence of intersite disorder, at the levels of 6.25%, 12.5%, and 25% within transition metal sites, on the XMCD spectra at L2,3 edges and spin polarization (SP) at the Fermi level. It is found that most sensitive to Fe–Mn and Co–Fe disorder are XMCD spectra at L2,3 edges of Fe, while the sensitivity decreases from Mn to Co. It is shown that magnetic moments estimated with the use of magneto-optical (MO) sum rules agree with the ab initio calculated ones to within 2%, 12%, and 19%, for Co, Fe, and Mn, respectively. The calculated SP decreases from 99% for ordered CoFeMnSi alloy, to 96% upon 25% Co–Fe disorder, to 83% for Fe–Mn disorder, and to 42% in the case of Co–Mn disorder. The calculated spectra agree well with the available experimental data. The rich XMCD spectral structures are predicted from first principles at Fe, Co, Mn and Si K edges.