Analysis of the spin polarization of secondary electrons emitted from Au/Fe

The spin polarization of secondary electrons emitted from Au thin ®lms on an Fe substrate is studied with a Monte Carlo simulation of electron scattering. The magnetic information depth of the secondary electrons is estimated by ®tting the exponential function to the calculated data and we found that the magnetic information depth increases with the primary electron energy from 11.5 at 0.3 to 26.3 AÊ at 4 keV. This result agrees fairly with the experimental one for the same nonmagnetic/magnetic bilayer system and it is much larger than that reported so far for bulk magnetic materials. # 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved