Magnetic Properties of Iron Clusters in Silver

Abstract

The discrete variational method is used to study the effect of interactions of iron impurities on the magnetic moments, hyperfine fields and isomer shifts at iron sites in silver. We study small clusters of iron atoms as they grow to form FCC phase that is coherent with the silver lattice. The effects of the lattice relaxation and the ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic couplings are also considered. When Fe atoms congregate around a central Fe atom in an FCC arrangement under ferromagnetic coupling, the local magnetic moment and the contact charge density at the central atom hardly change as the cluster builds up, whereas the hyperfine field increases asymptotically as the number of Fe nearest neighbors increases. Introduction of antiferromagnetic coupling has minor effect on the local magnetic moments and isomer shifts, however it produces large reduction in the hyperfine field. The lattice relaxation of the surrounding Fe atoms towards a BCC phase around a central Fe atom leads to reduction in the magnetic moment accompanied by increase in the magnetic hyperfine field.