Explaining the magnetic moment reduction of Fullerene encapsulated Gadolinium through a theoretical model

Abstract

We propose a Theoretical model accounting for the recently observed reduced magnetic moment of Gadolinium in fullerenes. While this reduction has been observed also for other trivalent rare-hearth atoms (Dy3+, Er3+, Ho3+) in fullerenes and can be ascribed to crystal field effects, the explanation of this phenomena for Gd3+ is not straightforward due to the sphericity of its ground state (S=7/2, L=0). In our model the momentum lowering is the result of a subtle interplay between hybridisation and spin-orbit interaction.