The Weiss Field Revisited

Abstract

In the model by P. Weiss the interaction between the molecules of a ferromagnetic substance is described by a uniform molecular field which is proportional to the current magnetization of the material. At each molecule the local field is the sum of the applied field and the molecular field. In this paper, the model by P. Weiss in a modified form is applied to ferroelectrics. More detailed investigations showed that based on the Weiss model we can simulate many typical ferroelectric properties, e. g. ferroelectric hystereses, the temperature dependence of the coercive field, the Curie-Weiss law for the electrical susceptibility and ‘butterfly’-curves for the electrical susceptibility vs applied field.