Emerging mechanisms of magnetocaloric effect in phase-separated metals

Abstract

We present a study of the magnetocaloric effect in metallic systems exhibiting first-order magnetic transitions and focus on consequences of magnetic phase separation. We account for ferrimagnetic, ferromagnetic, and Neel antiferromagnetic order. Based on the archetypal Hubbard model being treated within the mean-field approximation, we provide and explore its implications on the field-induced entropy change in metallic system with phase separation. Chosen framework allows us to properly analyze phase volumes' dependence on parameters of phase-separated (PS) system. Moreover, an account for phase separation boundaries as functions of magnetic field provides a natural splitting of the PS region, where each subregion corresponds to a different temperature dependence of entropy change: moving from one subregion to the other produces a kink, followed by a strong linear growth of entropy change. We encounter a second-order magnetic transition from paramagnetic to antiferromagnetic phase in PS region that occurs for particular parameter values. Despite the fact that both phases have zero total magnetization, the transition has a strong impact on entropy change.