Imaging of spin density in a crystal using polarized-neutron data and the Maximum-Entropy Method

In order to visualize the three-dimensional spin density in real space, the Maximum-Entropy Method (MEM) is applied to polarized-neutron data from Cs₃CoCl₅. The spin density obtained by the MEM shows the following features: most of the spin density is located at the Co site; the spin transfer from Co to Cl in the CoCl₄^2- ions seems less significant; instead, the effect of the Cl^- ligand on the spin-density distribution of Co is mainly on its anisotropy. A similar anisotropy is observed in the charge-density distribution obtained by the MEM, which suggested that the anisotropy in the Co spin density is due to electronic rather than magnetic interactions.