Spin Precession and Avalanches

In many magnetic materials, spin dynamics at short times are dominated by precessional motion as damping is relatively small. In the limit of no damping and no thermal noise, we show that for a large enough initial instability, an avalanche can transition to an ergodic phase where the state is equivalent to one at finite temperature, often above that for ferromagnetic ordering. This dynamical nucleation phenomenon is analyzed theoretically. For small finite damping the high temperature growth front becomes spread out over a large region. The implications for real materials are discussed.Comment: 4 pages 2 figure

Mechanism for nonequilibrium symmetry breaking and pattern formation in magnetic films

Magnetic thin films exhibit a strong variation in properties depending on their degree of disorder. Recent coherent x-ray speckle experiments on magnetic films have measured the loss of correlation between configurations at opposite fields and at the same field, upon repeated field cycling. We perform finite temperature numerical simulations on these systems that provide a comprehensive explanation for the experimental results. The simulations demonstrate, in accordance with experiments, that the memory of configurations increases with film disorder. We find that non-trivial microscopic differences exist between the zero field spin configuration obtained by starting from a large positive field and the zero field configuration starting at a large negative field. This seemingly paradoxical beahvior is due to the nature of the vector spin dynamics and is also seen in the experiments. For low disorder, there is an instability which causes the spontaneous growth of line-like domains at a critical field, also in accord with experiments. It is this unstable growth, which is highly sensitive to thermal noise, that is responsible for the small correlation between patterns under repeated cycling. The domain patterns, hysteresis loops, and memory properties of our simulated systems match remarkably well with the real experimental systems.Comment: 12 pages, 10 figures Added comparison of results with cond-mat/0412461 and some more discussio

Ising Dynamics with Damping

We show for the Ising model that is possible construct a discrete time stochastic model analogous to the Langevin equation that incorporates an arbitrary amount of damping. It is shown to give the correct equilibrium statistics and is then used to investigate nonequilibrium phenomena, in particular, magnetic avalanches. The value of damping can greatly alter the shape of hysteresis loops, and for small damping and high disorder, the morphology of large avalanches can be drastically effected. Small damping also alters the size distribution of avalanches at criticality.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures, 2 colum

Hysteresis multicycles in nanomagnet arrays

We predict two new physical effects in arrays of single-domain nanomagnets by performing simulations using a realistic model Hamiltonian and physical parameters. First, we find hysteretic multicycles for such nanomagnets. The simulation uses continuous spin dynamics through the Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert (LLG) equation. In some regions of parameter space, the probability of finding a multicycle is as high as ~0.6. We find that systems with larger and more anisotropic nanomagnets tend to display more multicycles. This result demonstrates the importance of disorder and frustration for multicycle behavior. We also show that there is a fundamental difference between the more realistic vector LLG equation and scalar models of hysteresis, such as Ising models. In the latter case, spin and external field inversion symmetry is obeyed but in the former it is destroyed by the dynamics, with important experimental implications.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figure

Subharmonics and Aperiodicity in Hysteresis Loops

We show that it is possible to have hysteretic behavior for magnets that does not form simple closed loops in steady state, but must cycle multiple times before returning to its initial state. We show this by studying the zero-temperature dynamics of the 3d Edwards Anderson spin glass. The specific multiple varies from system to system and is often quite large and increases with system size. The last result suggests that the magnetization could be aperiodic in the large system limit for some realizations of randomness. It should be possible to observe this phenomena in low-temperature experiments.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Barkhausen noise from zigzag domain walls

We investigate the Barkhausen noise in ferromagnetic thin films with zigzag domain walls. We use a cellular automaton model that describes the motion of a zigzag domain wall in an impure ferromagnetic quasi-two dimensional sample with in-plane uniaxial magnetization at zero temperature, driven by an external magnetic field. The main ingredients of this model are the dipolar spin-spin interactions and the anisotropy energy. A power law behavior with a cutoff is found for the probability distributions of size, duration and correlation length of the Barkhausen avalanches, and the critical exponents are in agreement with the available experiments. The link between the size and the duration of the avalanches is analyzed too, and a power law behavior is found for the average size of an avalanche as a function of its duration.Comment: 11 pages, 12 figure

Deep Spin-Glass Hysteresis Area Collapse and Scaling in the d=3d=3 ±J\pm J Ising Model

We investigate the dissipative loss in the $\pm J$ Ising spin glass in three dimensions through the scaling of the hysteresis area, for a maximum magnetic field that is equal to the saturation field. We perform a systematic analysis for the whole range of the bond randomness as a function of the sweep rate, by means of frustration-preserving hard-spin mean field theory. Data collapse within the entirety of the spin-glass phase driven adiabatically (i.e., infinitely-slow field variation) is found, revealing a power-law scaling of the hysteresis area as a function of the antiferromagnetic bond fraction and the temperature. Two dynamic regimes separated by a threshold frequency $\omega_c$ characterize the dependence on the sweep rate of the oscillating field. For $\omega < \omega_c$, the hysteresis area is equal to its value in the adiabatic limit $\omega = 0$, while for $\omega > \omega_c$ it increases with the frequency through another randomness-dependent power law.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figure

Nonstationary dynamics of the Alessandro-Beatrice-Bertotti-Montorsi model

We obtain an exact solution for the motion of a particle driven by a spring in a Brownian random-force landscape, the Alessandro-Beatrice-Bertotti-Montorsi (ABBM) model. Many experiments on quasi-static driving of elastic interfaces (Barkhausen noise in magnets, earthquake statistics, shear dynamics of granular matter) exhibit the same universal behavior as this model. It also appears as a limit in the field theory of elastic manifolds. Here we discuss predictions of the ABBM model for monotonous, but otherwise arbitrary, time-dependent driving. Our main result is an explicit formula for the generating functional of particle velocities and positions. We apply this to derive the particle-velocity distribution following a quench in the driving velocity. We also obtain the joint avalanche size and duration distribution and the mean avalanche shape following a jump in the position of the confining spring. Such non-stationary driving is easy to realize in experiments, and provides a way to test the ABBM model beyond the stationary, quasi-static regime. We study extensions to two elastically coupled layers, and to an elastic interface of internal dimension d, in the Brownian force landscape. The effective action of the field theory is equal to the action, up to 1-loop corrections obtained exactly from a functional determinant. This provides a connection to renormalization-group methods.Comment: 18 pages, 3 figure

Thermodynamics as a nonequilibrium path integral

Thermodynamics is a well developed tool to study systems in equilibrium but no such general framework is available for non-equilibrium processes. Only hope for a quantitative description is to fall back upon the equilibrium language as often done in biology. This gap is bridged by the work theorem. By using this theorem we show that the Barkhausen-type non-equilibrium noise in a process, repeated many times, can be combined to construct a special matrix ${\cal S}$ whose principal eigenvector provides the equilibrium distribution. For an interacting system ${\cal S}$, and hence the equilibrium distribution, can be obtained from the free case without any requirement of equilibrium.Comment: 15 pages, 5 eps files. Final version to appear in J Phys.

Standardized cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging (CMR) protocols, society for cardiovascular magnetic resonance: board of trustees task force on standardized protocols

<p/> <p>Index</p> <p><b>1. General techniques</b></p> <p>1.1. Stress and safety equipment</p> <p>1.2. Left ventricular (LV) structure and function module</p> <p>1.3. Right ventricular (RV) structure and function module</p> <p>1.4. Gadolinium dosing module.</p> <p>1.5. First pass perfusion</p> <p>1.6. Late gadolinium enhancement (LGE)</p> <p><b>2. Disease specific protocols</b></p> <p><b>2.1. Ischemic heart disease</b></p> <p>2.1.1. Acute myocardial infarction (MI)</p> <p>2.1.2. Chronic ischemic heart disease and viability</p> <p>2.1.3. Dobutamine stress</p> <p>2.1.4. Adenosine stress perfusion</p> <p><b>2.2. Angiography:</b></p> <p>2.2.1. Peripheral magnetic resonance angiography (MRA)</p> <p>2.2.2. Thoracic MRA</p> <p>2.2.3. Anomalous coronary arteries</p> <p>2.2.4. Pulmonary vein evaluation</p> <p><b>2.3. Other</b></p> <p>2.3.1. Non-ischemic cardiomyopathy</p> <p>2.3.2. Arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy (ARVC)</p> <p>2.3.3. Congenital heart disease</p> <p>2.3.4. Valvular heart disease</p> <p>2.3.5. Pericardial disease</p> <p>2.3.6. Masses</p