The Curie temperature of rare-earth Co intermetallics is investigated by self-consistent spin-polarized electronic-structure calculations on Y-Co compounds. The total exchange interaction of a given site with all other sites (J o ) is calculated by the linear-muffin-tin-orbital method using the local force theorem and employed to obtain mean-field Curie-temperature estimates. The theoretical predictions for YCo 3 , YCo 5 , and Y 2 Co 17 are in fair agreement with the experimental Curie

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... res. For YCo 5 , the variation of exchange interactions (J ij ) with distance is analyzed, and it is discussed how the presence of nonequivalent cobalt sites affects the Curie temperature of the compounds. Index Terms-Curie temperature, exchange interactions, magnetic moment, permanent magnets, rare-earth cobalt intermetallics, YCo 5 .