The Einstein-de Haas effect in an Fe15 cluster

Abstract

Classical models of spin-lattice coupling are at present unable to accurately reproduce results for numerous properties of ferromagnetic materials, such as heat transport coefficients or the sudden collapse of the magnetic moment in hcp-Fe under pressure. This inability has been attributed to the absence of a proper treatment of effects that are inherently quantum mechanical in nature, notably spin–orbit coupling (SOC). This paper introduces a time-dependent, non-collinear tight binding model, complete with SOC and vector Stoner exchange terms, that is capable of simulating the Einstein-de Haas (EdH) effect in a ferromagnetic Fe15 cluster. The tight binding model is used to investigate the adiabaticity timescales that determine the response of the orbital and spin angular momenta to a rotating, externally applied B field, and we show that the qualitative behaviors of our simulations can be extrapolated to realistic timescales by use of the adiabatic theorem. An analysis of the trends in the torque contributions with respect to the field strength demonstrates that SOC is necessary to observe a transfer of angular momentum from the electrons to the nuclei at experimentally realistic B fields. The simulations presented in this paper demonstrate the EdH effect from first principles using a Fe cluster.