Thermodynamics of the classical spin triangle

Abstract

Abstract The classical spin system consisting of three spins with Heisenberg interaction is an example of a completely integrable mechanical system. In this paper, we explicitly calculate thermodynamic quantities such as density of states, specific heat, susceptibility and spin autocorrelation functions. These calculations are performed (semi-)analytically and shown to agree with corresponding Monte Carlo simulations. It is shown that the thermodynamic functions depend qualitatively on the character of the system in terms of its frustration, especially w. r. t. their low temperature limit. For the long-time autocorrelation function, we find, for certain values of the coupling constants, a decay to constant values in the form of an 1/t damped harmonic oscillation and propose a theoretical explanation.