14 research outputs found
Nature of phase transition in magnetic thin films
We study the critical behavior of magnetic thin films as a function of the
film thickness. We use the ferromagnetic Ising model with the high-resolution
multiple histogram Monte Carlo (MC) simulation. We show that though the 2D
behavior remains dominant at small thicknesses, there is a systematic
continuous deviation of the critical exponents from their 2D values. We observe
that in the same range of varying thickness the deviation of the exponent
is very small from its 2D value, while exponent suffers a larger
deviation. Moreover, as long as the film thickness is fixed, i. e. no finite
size scaling is done in the direction perpendicular to the film, the 3D
values of the critical exponents cannot be attained even with very large (but
fixed) thickness. The crossover to 3D universality class cannot therefore take
place without finite size scaling applied in the direction, in the limit of
numerically accessible thicknesses. From values of exponent obtained
by MC, we estimate the effective dimension of the system. We conclude that with
regard to the critical behavior, thin films behave as systems with effective
dimension between 2 and 3.Comment: 8 pages, 17 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.
Zero temperature phases of the frustrated J1-J2 antiferromagnetic spin-1/2 Heisenberg model on a simple cubic lattice
At zero temperature magnetic phases of the quantum spin-1/2 Heisenberg
antiferromagnet on a simple cubic lattice with competing first and second
neighbor exchanges (J1 and J2) is investigated using the non-linear spin wave
theory. We find existence of two phases: a two sublattice Neel phase for small
J2 (AF), and a collinear antiferromagnetic phase at large J2 (CAF). We obtain
the sublattice magnetizations and ground state energies for the two phases and
find that there exists a first order phase transition from the AF-phase to the
CAF-phase at the critical transition point, pc = 0.28. Our results for the
value of pc are in excellent agreement with results from Monte-Carlo
simulations and variational spin wave theory. We also show that the quartic 1/S
corrections due spin-wave interactions enhance the sublattice magnetization in
both the phases which causes the intermediate paramagnetic phase predicted from
linear spin wave theory to disappear.Comment: 19 pages, 4 figures, Fig. 1b modified, Appendix B text modifie
Classical heisenberg antiferromagnet away from the pyrochlore lattice limit: entropic versus energetic selection
The stability of the disordered ground state of the classical Heisenberg
pyrochlore antiferromagnet is studied within extensive Monte Carlo simulations
by introducing an additional exchange interaction that interpolates
between the pyrochlore lattice () and the face-centered cubic lattice
(). It is found that for as low as , the system is
long range ordered : the disordered ground state of the pyrochlore
antiferromagnet is unstable when introducing very small deviations from the
pure limit. Furthermore, it is found that the selected phase is a
collinear state energetically greater than the incommensurate phase suggested
by a mean field analysis. To our knowledge this is the first example where
entropic selection prevails over the energetic one.Comment: 5 (two-column revtex4) pages, 1 table, 7 ps/eps figures. Submitted to
Phys. Rev.
Surfactant effect in heteroepitaxial growth. The Pb - Co/Cu(111) case
A MonteCarlo simulations study has been performed in order to study the
effect of Pb as surfactant on the initial growth stage of Co/Cu(111). The main
characteristics of Co growing over Cu(111) face, i.e. the decorated double
layer steps, the multiple layer islands and the pools of vacancies, disappear
with the pre-evaporation of a Pb monolayer. Through MC simulations, a full
picture of these complex processes is obtained. Co quickly diffuses through the
Pb monolayer exchanging place with Cu atoms at the substrate. The exchange
process diffusion inhibits the formation of pure Co islands, reducing the
surface stress and then the formation of multilayer islands and the pools of
vacancies. On the other hand, the random exchange also suppress the nucleation
preferential sites generated by Co atoms at Cu steps, responsible of the step
decoration.Comment: 4 pages, latex, 2 figures embedded in the tex
Ferromagnetism and Canted Spin Phase in AlAs/GaMnAs Single Quantum Wells: Monte Carlo Simulation
The magnetic order resulting from a confinement-adapted
Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yosida indirect exchange between magnetic moments in the
metallic phase of a AlAs/Ga(1-x)Mn(x)As quantum well is studied by Monte Carlo
simulation. This coupling mechanism involves magnetic moments and carriers
(holes), both coming from the same Mn(2+) ions. It leads to a paramagnetic, a
ferromagnetic, or a canted spin phase, depending on the carrier concentration,
and on the magnetic layer width. It is shown that high transition temperatures
may be obtained.Comment: 7 figure
Thermal excitations of frustated XY spins in two dimensions
We present a new variational approach to the study of phase transitions in
frustrated 2D XY models. In the spirit of Villain's approach for the
ferromagnetic case we divide thermal excitations into a low temperature long
wavelength part (LW) and a high temperature short wavelength part (SW). In the
present work we mainly deal with LW excitations and we explicitly consider the
cases of the fully frustrated triangular (FFTXY) and square ( FFSQXY) XY
models. The novel aspect of our method is that it preserves the coupling
between phase (spin angles) and chiral degrees of freedom. LW fluctuations
consist of coupled phase and chiral excitations. As a result, we find that for
frustrated systems the effective interactions between phase variables is long
range and oscillatory in contrast to the unfrustrated problem. Using Monte
Carlo (MC) simulations we show that our analytical calculations produce
accurate results at all temperature ; this is seen at low in the spin
wave stiffness constant and in the staggered chirality; this is also the case
near : transitions are driven by the SW part associated with domain walls
and vortices, but the coupling between phase and chiral variables is still
relevant in the critical region. In that regime our analytical results yield
the correct dependence for bare couplings (given by the LW fluctuations)
such as the Coulomb gas temperature of the frustrated XY models . In
particular we find that tracks chiral rather than phase fluctuations.
Our results provides support for a single phase transition scenario in the
FFTXY and FFSQXY models.Comment: 32 pages, RevTex, 11 eps figures available upon request, article to
appear in Phys. Rev.
Theoretical Study of Localized Spin Waves in a Ferrimagnet with Impurities
In this paper, we theoretically investigate the impurity state in a ferrimagnet. We consider a bodycentered cubic crystal based on the model of two sublattices, A-sublattice and B-sublattice. The impurity spin (Si) is assumed to be not located at the interstitial but located at the A-sublattice point or B-sublattice point. Confining our interests to the case of one impurity and one spin-wave, we solve Our problem exactly. We have found several interesting features for our system. For example, the localized spin-wave appears in the band gap only when Si is located at A-sublattice point if SA<SB and the exchange coupling between the impurity spin and the neighboring SB spin is antiferromagnetic