Effective anisotropies and energy barriers of magnetic nanoparticles with Néel surface anisotropy

Magnetic nanoparticles with Néel surface anisotropy, different internal structures, surface arrangements, and elongation are modeled as many-spin systems. The results suggest that the energy of many-spin nanoparticles cut from cubic lattices can be represented by an effective one-spin potential containing uniaxial and cubic anisotropies. It is shown that the values and signs of the corresponding constants depend strongly on the particle's surface arrangement, internal structure, and shape. Particles cut from a simple cubic lattice have the opposite sign of the effective cubic term, as compared to particles cut from the face-centered cubic lattice. Furthermore, other remarkable phenomena are observed in nanoparticles with relatively strong surface effects. (i) In elongated particles surface effects can change the sign of the uniaxial anisotropy. (ii) In symmetric particles (spherical and truncated octahedral) with cubic core anisotropy surface effects can change the sing of the latter. We also show that the competition between the core and surface anisotropies leads to a new energy that contributes to both the second- and fourth-order effective anisotropies. We evaluate energy barriers ΔE as functions of the strength of the surface anisotropy and the particle size. The results are analyzed with the help of the effective one-spin potential, which allows us to assess the consistency of the widely used formula ΔE/V= K∞ +6 Ks /D, where K∞ is the core anisotropy constant, Ks is a phenomenological constant related to surface anisotropy, and D is the particle's diameter. We show that the energy barriers are consistent with this formula only for elongated particles for which the surface contribution to the effective uniaxial anisotropy scales with the surface and is linear in the constant of the Néel surface anisotropy. © 2007 The American Physical Society

Unusual formations of the free electromagnetic field in vacuum

It is shown that there are exact solutions of the free Maxwell equations (FME) in vacuum allowing an existence of stable spherical formations of the free magnetic field and ring-like formations of the free electric field. It is detected that a form of these spheres and rings does not change with time in vacuum. It is shown that these convergent solutions are the result of an interference of some divergent solutions of FME. One can surmise that these electromagnetic formations correspond to Kapitsa's hypothesis about interference origin and a structure of fireball.Comment: Revtex-file, without figures. To get lournal-pdf-copy with figures contact with [email protected]

Unified decoupling scheme for exchange and anisotropy contributions and temperature-dependent spectral properties of anisotropic spin systems

We compute the temperature-dependent spin-wave spectrum and the magnetization for a spin system using the unified decoupling procedure for the high-order Green's functions for the exchange coupling and anisotropy, both in the classical and quantum case. Our approach allows us to establish a clear crossover between quantum-mechanical and classical methods by developing the classical analog of the quantum Green's function technique. The results are compared with the classical spectral density method and numerical modeling based on the stochastic Landau-Lifshitz equation and the Monte Carlo technique. As far as the critical temperature is concerned, there is a full agreement between the classical Green's functions technique and the classical spectral density method. However, the former method turns out to be more straightforward and more convenient than the latter because it avoids any \emph{a priori} assumptions about the system's spectral density. The temperature-dependent exchange stiffness as a function of magnetization is investigated within different approaches

Thermal fluctuations and longitudinal relaxation of single-domain magnetic particles at elevated temperatures

We present numerical and analytical results for the swiching times of magnetic nanoparticles with uniaxial anisotropy at elevated temperatures, including the vicinity of T_c. The consideration is based in the Landau-Lifshitz-Bloch equation that includes the relaxation of the magnetization magnitude M. The resulting switching times are shorter than those following from the naive Landau-Lifshitz equation due to (i) additional barrier lowering because of the reduction of M at the barrier and (ii) critical divergence of the damping parameters.Comment: 4 PR pages, 1 figur

Ultra-fast spin dynamics: the effect of colored noise

Recent experimental results have pushed the limits of magnetization dynamics to pico- and femtosecond timescales. This ultra-fast spin dynamics occurs in extreme conditions of strong and rapidly varying fields and high temperatures. This situation requires new description of magnetization dynamics, even on a phenomenological level of the atomistic Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert equation, taking into account that the correlation time for electron system could be of the order of the inverse characteristic spin frequency. For this case we introduce the thermodynamically correct phenomenological approach for spin dynamics based on the Landau-Lifshitz-Miyasaki-Seki equation. The influence of the noise correlation time on longitudinal and transverse magnetization relaxation is investigated. We also demonstrate the effect of the noise correlation time on demagnetisation rate of different materials during laser-induced dynamics

The phase plane of moving discrete breathers

We study anharmonic localization in a periodic five atom chain with quadratic-quartic spring potential. We use discrete symmetries to eliminate the degeneracies of the harmonic chain and easily find periodic orbits. We apply linear stability analysis to measure the frequency of phonon-like disturbances in the presence of breathers and to analyze the instabilities of breathers. We visualize the phase plane of breather motion directly and develop a technique for exciting pinned and moving breathers. We observe long-lived breathers that move chaotically and a global transition to chaos that prevents forming moving breathers at high energies.Comment: 8 pages text, 4 figures, submitted to Physical Review Letters. See http://www.msc.cornell.edu/~houle/localization