Statistical mechanics of magnetic excitations. From spin waves to stripes and checkerboards (Q2889308)

The book is devoted to elementary excitations in magnetic periodic structures, the spin waves and magnons, which behave like an ideal Bose gas at low temperature and an interacting Bose system at higher temperature. The book is divided into ten chapters. Chapter 1 introduces the Heisenberg Hamiltonian preliminary considering the Hamiltonian for the hydrogen molecule. As a result, the states with single and two spin deviations are introduced defining in particular the energy eigenvalues of a ring of \(N\) spins with exchange interaction. Then the classical version of the spin waves being the classical counterpart of the quantum spin waves is studied. Chapter 2 studies the model Heisenberg Hamiltonian for a ferromagnet being an exchange Hamiltonian with NN ferromagnetic interaction. As a result, a transformation is found from the spin operators to Bose ``creation'' and ``destruction'' operators, which are essential for building a perturbation theory to infinite order. The low temperature thermodynamics functions are obtained after introducing the harmonic Hamiltonian and an application to quasi-2D and quasi-1D models is discussed. In Chapter 3, the interaction between the spin waves is accounted for using the method of the motion equation of the Green function. With this aim, the correlation functions are written in terms of a boson Green function satisfying the motion equation. By considering the first-order and second-order perturbation equations, it is shown that the second-order self-energy is not a real function. Instead of treating the four-operator Green function in a perturbative way, its exact motion equation is written and applied to the harmonic approximation to the six-operator Green function. As a result, it is shown how the spin wave spectrum is modified by the interaction between the spin waves. Chapter 4 presents the first-, second- and third-order perturbation theories for the Green function using the Feynman diagrams in ferromagnets. The self-energy corresponding to the sum of diagrams, taking into account the main temperature contributions, are considered. As a result, it is shown that the poles of the \(T\)-matrix correspond to the bound states of the system. Chapter 5 provides the two-magnon bound states in 2D and 3D cases starting directly from the boson operators corresponding to the creation and destruction operators of magnons. The case of bound states in anisotropic ferromagnets is also considered. Chapter 6 gives explicit calculations of the spin waves in ferromagnets with planar anisotropy and discusses the way to overcome the problem of the kinematical consistency entered by the spin-boson transformation in the systems with planar anisotropy. Chapter 7 studies Hamiltonian models that can give non-collinear configurations in the ground state. By this, a non-collinear ground state is obtained from the Heisenberg Hamiltonian when the exchange interaction is not limited to NN spins. As a special case of a helix configuration, the approximate antiferromagnetic ground state and the antiferromagnetic spin waves are obtained. Different kinds of frustrations are studied (due to the quantum and thermal disorder, competing exchange interactions on triangle and honeycomb lattices). The neutron cross-section is also evaluated for a system with non-collinear order into the framework of the harmonic approximation. Chapter 8 studies the spin waves in finite systems describing magnetic multilayers or spin waves in a semi-infinite system describing the effect of surfaces on magnetic systems, taking into account the loss of periodicity in the direction perpendicular to the magnetic layers and considering the retarded Green function. The calculations are performed for bilayer and trilayer. In order to study the spin dynamics in multilayers, the classical mechanics is used by assuming the spins to be classical vectors. Model made up of a semi-infinite stacking of layers is also studied. Chapter 9 studies the ground-state configuration and spin waves excitations in presence of long-range dipole-dipole interaction. The explicit calculation for an infinite 3D lattice is obtained following the Ewald's method. Specific results are obtained for the high-temperature superconductor ErBa\({}^2Cu^3O^6+x\) including a crystalline electric field calculation to fit the model with the experimental data. Dipole-dipole interaction in 2D systems is studied in Chapter 10. First, the planar rotator model with long-range interactions is studied based on the consideration of the corresponding Hamiltonian. Then, the existence of stripes and checkerboard configurations is shown by considering a 2D Ising model with NN ferromagnetic and dipole-dipole interaction and changing the weight of the short- and long-range interactions. The ground-state energy of a 2D system with dipole-dipole interaction is given and the Ewald's method is extended to the 2D case. The results at finite temperature, obtained by Monte Carlo simulations are presented, finally. In a whole, the book combining the modern problems of statistical mechanics, directed to the study of magnetic excitations in different systems, with strict mathematical statement and the solution of the corresponding problems will be very useful for undergraduate and graduate students studying the magnetism problems, and also for theoreticians researching magnetism and magnetic materials.