Enhanced magnetocaloric effect in frustrated magnets

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that strongly frustrated classical Heisenberg antiferromagnets exhibit a significantly enhanced magnetocaloric effect due to soft modes, surpassing ordinary magnets and ideal paramagnets, confirmed through simulations.

Contribution

It provides a theoretical and computational analysis showing enhanced magnetocaloric effects in frustrated magnets due to soft modes, expanding understanding of their thermodynamic properties.

Findings

Enhanced (dT/dH)_S in frustrated magnets compared to non-frustrated ones

Magnetocaloric effect exceeds that of an ideal paramagnet

Soft modes are responsible for the enhancement

Abstract

The magnetothermodynamics of strongly frustrated classical Heisenberg antiferromagnets on kagome, garnet, and pyrochlore lattices is examined. The field induced adiabatic temperature change (dT/dH)_S is significantly larger for such systems compared to ordinary non-frustrated magnets and also exceeds the cooling rate of an ideal paramagnet in a wide range of fields. An enhancement of the magnetocaloric effect is related to presence of a macroscopic number of soft modes in frustrated magnets below the saturation field. Theoretical predictions are confirmed with extensive Monte Carlo simulations.