Interaction of an external impurity with the surface intrinsic mode in a Heisenberg chain

Abstract

In this paper we have demonstrated the existence of surface intrinsic localized modes in one-dimensional classical spin systems. These modes have frequencies above the top of the magnon band and are more localized than the corresponding modes that were found in the lattice dynamics. By numerical methods we have studied the forward evolution in time. These entities are stable in time for many time steps. Also, we consider the interaction of these surface excitations with an external dipolar field. We have first considered the case in which the external dipole is parallel to the spins of the bulk. According to the distance of the impurity from the surface we find that at a particular distance a new surface mode appears, that we have called a mixed mode because it is formed by a localized state at the surface plus a plane wave. At large distances the dipole traps the surface mode, while at small distances the external impurity potential is so strong that all the spins are forced to be aligned in the $z$ direction. For the case in which the external magnetic dipole is antiparallel to the bulk spins there are no mixed modes and the external impurity is so strong that the surface modes are trapped at large distances, and the bulk modes are trapped at very short distances.