Moment-generating function zeros in the study of phase transitions.

Partition function zeros play a central role in the study of phase transitions. Recently, energy probability distribution (EPD) zeros were proposed as an alternative approach that solves some of the implementation issues present in the Fisher zeros method by allowing drastic reduction of the polynomial. Here, a formulation based on the EPD zeros that can reduce even more the polynomial degree while maintaining its accuracy is presented. This method has shown to be computationally cheaper than the EPD zeros, allowing the study of systems by using partition function zeros that would be unfeasible otherwise. In addition, the method can be easily extended to study phase transitions in external fields while maintaining all of its improvements.

Effects of magnetic monopoles charge on the cracking reversal processes in artificial square ices.

In this paper we perform nanofabrication of square artificial spin ices with different lattice parameters, in order to investigate the roles of vertex excitation on the features of the system. In particular, the character of magnetic charge distribution asymmetry on the vertices are observed under magnetic hysteresis loop experiments. We then compare our results with simulation using an emergent Hamiltonian containing objects such as magnetic monopoles and dipoles in the vertices of the array (instead of the usual Hamiltonian based on the dipolar interactions among the magnetic nanoislands). All possible interactions between these objects are considered (monopole-monopole, monopole-dipole and dipole-dipole). Using realistic parameters we observe very good match between experiments and theory, which allow us to better understand the system dynamics in function of monopole charge intensity.

Emergence and mobility of monopoles in a unidirectional arrangement of magnetic nanoislands.

Magnetricity, the magnetic equivalent of electricity, was recently verified experimentally for the first time. Indeed, like the stream of electric charges that produces electric current, emergent magnetic monopoles have been observed to roam freely in geometrically frustrated magnets known as spin ice. However, such phenomena demand extreme physical conditions, say, a single spin ice crystal has to be cooled to very low temperature, around 0.36 K. Candidates to overcome this difficulty are their artificial analogues, the so-called artificial spin ices. Here, we demonstrate that a specific unidirectional arrangement of nanoislands yields a peculiar system where magnetic monopoles emerge and are constrained to move along aligned dipoles, providing an ordered flow of magnetic charges at room temperature.

Magnetic anisotropy of elongated thin ferromagnetic nano-islands for artificial spin ice arrays.

The energetics of thin elongated ferromagnetic nano-islands is considered for some different shapes, aspect ratios and applied magnetic field directions. These nano-island particles are important for artificial spin ice materials. For low temperature, the magnetic internal energy of an individual particle is evaluated numerically as a function of the direction of a particle's net magnetization. This leads to estimations of effective anisotropy constants for (1) the easy axis along the particle's long direction, and (2) the hard axis along the particle's thin direction. A spin relaxation algorithm together with fast Fourier transform for the demagnetization field is used to solve the micromagnetics problem for a thin system. The magnetic hysteresis is also found. The results indicate some possibilities for controlling the equilibrium and dynamics in spin ice materials by using different island geometries.

Phase transition in the two-dimensional dipolar planar rotator model.

In this work we have used extensive Monte Carlo simulations and finite size scaling theory to study the phase transition in the dipolar planar rotator model (dPRM), also known as dipolar XY model. The true long-range character of the dipolar interactions was taken into account by using the Ewald summation technique. Our results for the critical exponents do not fit those from known universality classes. We observed that the specific heat is apparently non-divergent and the critical exponents are ν = 1.277(2), ß = 0.2065(4) and γ = 2.218(5). The critical temperature was found to be T(c) = 1.201(1). Our results are clearly distinct from those of a recent renormalization group study from Maier and Schwabl (2004 Phys. Rev. B 70 134430) and agrees with the results from a previous study of the anisotropic Heisenberg model with dipolar interactions in a bilayer system using a cut-off in the dipolar interactions (Mól and Costa 2009 Phys. Rev. B 79 054404).