Identification of the Dominant Precession-Damping Mechanism in Fe, Co, and Ni by First-Principles Calculations

The Landau-Lifshitz equation reliably describes magnetization dynamics using a phenomenological treatment of damping. This Letter presents first-principles calculations of the damping parameters for Fe, Co, and Ni that quantitatively agree with existing ferromagnetic resonance measurements. This agreement establishes the dominant damping mechanism for these systems and takes a significant step toward predicting and tailoring the damping constants of new materials.

Figure 1

Calculated Landau-Lifshitz damping constant for Fe, Co, and Ni. Thick solid curves give the total damping parameter while dotted curves give the intraband and dashed lines the interband contributions. Values for $\lambda$ are given in SI units. The right axis is the equivalent Gilbert damping parameter and the top axis is the full width half maximum of the electron spectral functions.