This volume covers various physical aspects of a wide range of rare-earth materials. Magnetic phenomena dominate the contents of the first four chapters which deal with thin films and layered structures, and intermetallic and nonmetallic compounds. The remaining two chapters deal with coherent emission and electronic structure calculations of lanthanide molecules.

The first chapter covers the state-of-the-art of the synthesis and properties of thin films of the rare-earth metals and layered superstructures of two rare-earth metals. The following chapter is a review of rare-earth-transition metal nanoscale multilayers and describes the recent advances in our understanding of magnetic structure, interfacial magnetism, and origin of perpendicular magnetic anisotropy of lanthanide-transition-metal nanoscale multilayers. The next chapter deals with one of the important series of rare-earth intermetallic compounds, those which possess the ThNm12-type structure. The authors of the following chapter review the specific magnetic and magnetoelastic properties of certain crystals, which are determined by the localized electronic magnetic moments of the lanthanide ions in the crystal lattice and their interactions with each other and surrounding ions. The chapter on coherent emission differs from other reviews on the subject in that it concentrates on the broader issues. Here the emphasis is on superradiance, superfluorescence, amplification of spontaneous emission by other stimulated emision than the laser effect and coherent spontaneous emission. The final chapter describes the progress that has been made in electronic structure calculations of lanthanide-containing molecules, especially in the last 10 years.