Anisotropic hyperfine interaction for /sup 119/Sn impurity atoms in the ferrimagnet TmFe/sub 2/

A Moessbauer spectroscopy study is made of the magnetic hyperfine interaction (MHI) for /sup 119/Sn atoms substituted for Fe atoms in the ferrimagnetic intermetallic compound TmFe/sub 2/. At 77 K the local magnetic fields for the Sn atoms in the a-italic and b-italic sites of the Fe sublattice are 8.32 +- 0.03 and 5.50 +- 0.02 T, respectively. The magnetic hyperfine fields (found after correcting for the dipole field) are B-italic/sub hf/(a-italic) = 9.72 T and B-italic/sub hf/(b-italic) = 4.99 T. The isotropic and anisotropic components of B-italic/sub hf/ are 6.17 T and 3.55 T, respectively. The magnetic hyperfine field is antiparallel to the magnetization of the Fe sublattice. Analysis of the temperature dependence of B-italic/sub hf/ and the structure of the Moessbauer spectra of /sup 119/Sn in the alloys (Tm,Y)Fe/sub 2/, (Tm,Gd)Fe/sub 2/, and Tm(Fe,Al)/sub 2/ implies that the MHI for Sn impurity atoms in TmFe/sub 2/ is determined entirely by the Fe sublattice. The parameters found for the MHI and the giant anisotropy of B-italic/sub hf/ are interpreted with the aid of a two-component model of the MHI./sup 4/ The lack of a contribution to B-italic/sub hf/ from the Tm sublattice is treated as a consequence of themore » correlation between the MHI parameters and the peculiar features of the chemical bond of the Sn impurity atom with neighboring magnetic atoms.« less