  Lanthanide metals are a particular class of magnetic materials in which the
magnetic moments are carried mainly by the localized electrons of the 4f shell.
They are frequently found in technically relevant systems, to achieve, e.g.,
high magnetic anisotropy. Magneto-optical methods in the x-ray range are well
suited to study complex magnetic materials in an element-specific way. In this
work, we report on recent progress on the quantitative determination of
magneto-optical constants of several lanthanides in the soft x-ray region and
we show some examples of applications of magneto-optics to hard-magnetic
interfaces and exchange-coupled layered structures containing lanthanide
elements.
