Spin reorientation transition and phase diagram of ultrathin ferromagnetic films

• Autor(a) principal: Carubelli, Marianela
• Data de Publicação: 2008
• Outros Autores: Billoni, Orlando Vito, Pighin, Santiago Alberto, Cannas, Sergio A., Stariolo, Daniel Adrian, Tamarit, Francisco A.
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da UFRGS
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10183/104519
• topic: Diagramas de fase; Ferromagnetismo; Filmes finos; Pontos criticos

We show results from Monte Carlo simulations of a two-dimensional Heisenberg model for ultrathin films with perpendicular anisotropy. A complete phase diagram is obtained as a function of anisotropy and temperature, spanning a wide range of behavior. We discuss our results in relation to experimental findings in different ultrathin films. We observe and characterize a line of spin reorientation transitions. This transition from out-of-plane stripe order to in-plane ferromagnetic order presents an intermediate paramagnetic gap in a finite region of parameter space, as reported in experiments. For large anisotropies, direct transitions from a low temperature stripe phase to a paramagnetic or tetragonal phase with dominant perpendicular magnetization is observed, which is also in agreement with experiments. We also show the phase diagram for a system without exchange, i.e., with pure dipolar and anisotropy interactions. It shows a similar behavior to the ferromagnetic case with antiferromagnetic instead of stripe phases at low temperatures. A spin reorientation transition is also found in this case.