X-ray magnetic circular dichroism

With the advent of highly brilliant photon sources of excellent polarization characteristics a variety of new methods has been developed to investigate the magnetism of solids with X-rays. One is the study of X-ray magnetic circular dichroism (X-MCD) in core-level absorption, which detects the dependence of the absorption coefficient in the vicinity of an absorption edge of circularly polarized radiation on the magneti- zation of the target. This method attracts a steadily growing interest since the dichroic ef- fects can provide element- and symmetry-selec- tive information on the polarization of the elec- tronic states at the Fermi level and on local magnetic moments separated into spin and or- bital contributions. In this short review we intend to exemplify the versatility and elegance of this method by apply- ing it to current problems in magnetism