Doping NiFe by heavy rare earth atoms alters the magnetic relaxation
properties of this material drastically. We show that this effect can be well
explained by the slow relaxing impurity mechanism. This process is a
consequence of the anisotropy of the on site exchange interaction between the
4f magnetic moments and the conduction band. As expected from this model the
magnitude of the damping effect scales with the anisotropy of the exchange
interaction and increases by an order of magnitude at low temperatures. In
addition our measurements allow us to determine the relaxation time of the 4f
electrons as a function of temperature