Under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license.-- et al.The observation of an anomalous quadrupolar signal in x-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD) at the Fe K-edge of iron phthalocyanine (FePc) films is reported. All ground states previously suggested for FePc are incompatible with the experimental data. Based on ab initio molecular orbital multiplet calculations of the isolated FePc molecule, we propose a model for the magnetic ground state of the FePc film that explains the XMCD data and reproduces the observed values of the orbital moments in the perpendicular and planar directions.The financial support of the Spanish financial agency MINECO MAT2011-23791 and MAT2014-53921-R, Aragonese DGA-IMANA E34 (co-funded by Fondo Social Europeo), and European Union FEDER funds is acknowledged. The research at UCSD was supported by the Office of Basic Energy Science, US Department of Energy, BES-DMS, funded by the Department of Energy Office of Basic Energy Science, DMR, under Grant No. DE FG03 87ER-45332.Peer Reviewe
