Magnetocaloric Properties of an Ising Antiferromagnet on a Kagome Lattice

Abstract

Owing to a high degree of geometrical frustration an Ising antiferromagnet on a kagome lattice (IAKL) is known to exhibit no long-range ordering at any temperature, including the ground state. Nevertheless, at low temperatures it shows a strongly correlated, highly fluctuating regime known as a cooperative paramagnet or classical spin liquid. In the ground state it is characterized by a macroscopic degeneracy which translates to a relatively large value of the residual entropy. It has been shown that the presence of a macroscopic degeneracy associated with geometrical frustration below the saturation field can facilitate an enhanced magnetocaloric effect (MCE), which can exceed that of an ideal paramagnet with equivalent spin by more than an order of magnitude. In the present study we investigate magnetic and magnetocaloric properties of IAKL by Monte Carlo simulation. In particular, we calculate the entropy of the system using the thermodynamic integration method and evaluate quantities which characterize MCE, such as the isothermal entropy and adiabatic temperature changes in a varying magnetic field. It is found that IAKL shows the most interesting magnetocaloric properties at low temperatures and moderate magnetic fields, suggesting its potential to be used in technological applications for low-temperature magnetic refrigeration.