Frustration effects in antiferromagnetic molecules: the cuboctahedron

TL;DR

This paper investigates the effects of magnetic frustration in antiferromagnetic molecules, specifically the cuboctahedron, highlighting its unique energy spectrum and phenomena like magnetization plateaus and jumps.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of the cuboctahedron's energy spectrum, including all states up to spin quantum number s=3/2, illustrating frustration-induced phenomena.

Findings

Identification of unusual energy spectra with many singlet levels

Observation of magnetization plateaus and jumps

Complete energy spectrum up to s=3/2 states

Abstract

Frustration of magnetic systems which is caused by competing interactions is the driving force of several unusual phenomena such as plateaus and jumps of the magnetization curve as well as of unusual energy spectra with for instance many singlet levels below the first triplet state. The antiferromagnetic cuboctahedron can serve as a paradigmatic example of certain frustrated antiferromagnets. In addition it has the advantage that its complete energy spectrum can be obtained up to individual spin quantum numbers of s=3/2 (16,777,216 states).