Magnetic behaviour of a disordered Ising ferrimagnet in a high magnetic field

Abstract

The magnetic behaviour of a disordered ferrimagnetic system where both A and B represent magnetic atoms with respective spins and in the presence of a high magnetic field is treated theoretically. Assuming the magnetic interaction can be described through the Ising Hamiltonian the approximate free energy is obtained using the cluster-variational method. The field dependence of the magnetization is then obtained for different concentrations p and exchange parameters (J AA , J BB and J AB ). For p = 0.5, the magnetization M in the ferrimagnetic state and in the absence of a compensation temperature T cm vanishes at T c. Field-induced reversal of M is found at switching temperature T S () which is a decreasing function of the field H. A maximum in M is found above T S and the maximum value of M increases with the field. In the ferrimagnetic state M increases almost linearly in the high H region. For a system with large ferromagnetic J AA , the compensation temperature T cm is an increasing function of J BB and J AB . The decrease in compensation temperature is linear at small fields and tends to saturate at higher fields. The sharpness of the magnetization reversal is increased with H. For a fully compensated state of the system with p = 2/3, the magnetization in the presence of H also exhibits switching behaviour at T S. For p = 0.2 the field-induced reversal of magnetization occurs more sharply. The orientational switching of the sublattice magnetization MA and MB with field increases the Zeeman energy and is the origin of magnetization reversal at T S.