Calculating critical temperatures for ferromagnetic order in two-dimensional materials

Magnetic order in two-dimensional (2D) materials is intimately coupled to magnetic anisotropy (MA) since the Mermin-Wagner theorem implies that rotational symmetry cannot be spontaneously broken at finite temperatures in 2D. Large MA thus comprises a key ingredient in the search for magnetic 2D materials that retains the magnetic order above room temperature. Magnetic interactions are typically modeled in terms of Heisenberg models and the temperature dependence on magnetic properties can be obtained with the Random Phase Approximation (RPA), which treats magnon interactions at the mean-field level. In the present work we show that large MA gives rise to strong magnon-magnon interactions that leads to a drastic failure of the RPA. We then demonstrate that classical Monte Carlo (MC) simulations correctly describe the critical temperatures in the large MA limit and agree with RPA when the MA becomes small. A fit of the MC results leads to a simple expression for the critical temperatures as a function of MA and exchange coupling constants, which significantly simplifies the theoretical search for new 2D magnetic materials with high critical temperatures. The expression is tested on a monolayer of CrI$_3$, which were recently observed to exhibit ferromagnetic order below 45 K and we find excellent agreement with the experimental value.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figure

Covering of elliptic curves and the kernel of the Prym map

Motivated by a conjecture of Xiao, we study families of coverings of elliptic curves and their corresponding Prym map $\Phi$. More precisely, we describe the codifferential of the period map $P$ associated to $\Phi$ in terms of the residue of meromorphic $1$-forms and then we use it to give a characterization for the coverings for which the dimension of $\ker(dP)$ is the least possibile. This is useful in order to exclude the existence of non isotrivial fibrations with maximal relative irregularity and thus also in order to give counterexamples to the Xiao's conjecture mentioned above. The first counterexample to the original conjecture, due to Pirola, is then analysed in our framework.Comment: 21 pages, no figures. The seminal ideas at the base of this article were born in the framework of the PRAGMATIC project of year 201

On the rank of the flat unitary summand of the Hodge bundle

Let $f\colon S\to B$ be a non-isotrivial fibred surface. We prove that the genus $g$, the rank $u_f$ of the unitary summand of the Hodge bundle $f_*\omega_f$ and the Clifford index $c_f$ satisfy the inequality $u_f \leq g - c_f$. Moreover, we prove that if the general fibre is a plane curve of degree $\geq 5$ then the stronger bound $u_f \leq g - c_f-1$ holds. In particular, this provides a strengthening of the bounds of \cite{BGN} and of \cite{FNP}. The strongholds of our arguments are the deformation techniques developed by the first author in \cite{Rigid} and by the third author and Pirola in \cite{PT}, which display here naturally their power and depht.Comment: 19 pages, revised versio