Controlling magnetic anisotropy in amplitude expansion of phase field crystal model

TL;DR

This paper introduces a method to control magnetic anisotropy in a phase field crystal model, enabling realistic simulations of magnetic materials' microstructure evolution without added computational cost.

Contribution

The study demonstrates how higher-order magnetic coupling terms can be used to tune magnetic anisotropy in amplitude expansion phase field crystal models.

Findings

Successfully reproduces easy and hard magnetization directions.

Enables simulation of dislocation networks and microstructure manipulation.

Demonstrates magnetic anisotropy effects in Fe grain shrinkage.

Abstract

The amplitude expansion for a magnetic phase-field-crystal (magnetic APFC) model enables a convenient coarse-grained description of crystalline structures under the influence of magnetic fields. Considering higher-order magnetic coupling terms, we demonstrate the possibility of tuning the magnetic anisotropy in these models. This allows for reproducing the easy and hard direction of magnetization. Such a result can be achieved without increasing the computational cost, enabling simulations of the manipulation of dislocation networks and microstructures in ferromagnetic materials. As a demonstration, we report on the simulation of the shrinkage of a spherical grain with the magnetic anisotropy of Fe.