First-principles calculations of magnetization relaxation in pure Fe, Co, and Ni with frozen thermal lattice disorder

TL;DR

This paper uses first-principles scattering theory with frozen thermal lattice disorder to study electron-phonon interactions affecting magnetization relaxation in Fe, Co, and Ni, achieving good agreement with experimental data.

Contribution

It introduces a computational approach that models thermal lattice disorder for predicting magnetization relaxation, applicable to pure metals and alloys.

Findings

Reproduces non-monotonic damping behavior observed experimentally.

Achieves quantitative agreement with measured relaxation times.

Provides a method extendable to alloys using ab initio phonon spectra.

Abstract

The effect of the electron-phonon interaction on magnetization relaxation is studied within the framework of first-principles scattering theory for Fe, Co, and Ni by displacing atoms in the scattering region randomly with a thermal distribution. This "frozen thermal lattice disorder" approach reproduces the non-monotonic damping behaviour observed in ferromagnetic resonance measurements and yields reasonable quantitative agreement between calculated and experimental values. It can be readily applied to alloys and easily extended by determining the atomic displacements from ab initio phonon spectra.