Equilibrium current vortices in rare-earth-doped simple metals

Abstract

Dilute alloys of rare earths have played a vital role in understanding magnetic phenomena. Here, we model the ground state of dilute 4f rare-earth impurities in light metals. When the 4f subshells are open (but not half-filled), the spin-orbit coupling imprints a rotational charge current of conduction electrons around rare-earth atoms. The sign and amplitude of the current oscillate similar to the RKKY spin polarization. We compute the observable effect, namely the Oersted field generated by the current vortices and the Knight shift.