Frozen metastable states in ordered systems of ultrafine magnetic particles

TL;DR

This study uses Monte Carlo simulations to explore how dipolar interactions and anisotropy energy lead to frozen metastable states and domain formation in ordered ultrafine magnetic particle systems, with implications for real liquid-like systems.

Contribution

It demonstrates the formation of frozen metastable domains due to combined anisotropy and dipolar interactions in ordered magnetic particle systems, highlighting history dependence and slow relaxation.

Findings

Magnetic chains form along the z-axis due to anisotropy and dipole interactions.

Domains depend on the system's history and relax very slowly.

Results suggest similar metastable states may occur in real liquid-like magnetic systems.

Abstract

For studying the interplay of dipolar interaction and anisotropy energy in systems of ultrafine magnetic particles we consider simple cubic systems of magnetic dipoles with anisotropy axes pointing into the $z$-direction. Using Monte Carlo simulations we study the magnetic relaxation from several initial states. We show explicitely that, due to the combined influence of anisotropy energy and dipole interaction, magnetic chains are formed along the $z$-direction that organize themselves in frozen metastable domains of columnar antiferromagnetic order. We show that the domains depend explicitely on the history and relax only at extremely large time scales towards the ordered state. We consider this as an indication for the appearence of frozen metastable states also in real sytems, where the dipoles are located in a liquid-like fashion and the anisotropy axes point into random directions.