Surface of a spin-polarized electron gas

The surface of a spin-polarized electron gas is used to model the conduction electrons at the surface of both a simple metal in a magnetic field and ferromagnetic gadolinium. A self-consistent calculation based on the Hohenberg-Kohn-Sham density-functional formalism obtains the densities of majority and minority-spin electrons at the surface. For a simple metal, we calculate the position-dependent susceptibility which describes the response of the surface to a uniform magnetic field. For gadolinium, we obtain the change in work function, surface magnetization, and surface energy between the paramagnetic and saturated ferromagnetic states.