Low-temperature metastable states in a stacked triangular Ising antiferromagnet

Abstract

We study low-temperature magnetization processes in a stacked triangular Ising antiferromagnet by Monte Carlo simulations. In increasing and decreasing magnetic fields we observe multiple steps and hysteresis corresponding to formation of different metastable states. Besides the equidistant threefold splitting of the 1/3 ferrimagnetic plateau, we additionally confirm a fourth plateau in the field-increasing branch and a sizable remanence when the field is decreased to zero. The newly observed plateau only appears at sufficiently low temperature and sufficiently large exchange interaction in the stacking direction. These observations reasonably reproduce low-temperatures measurements on the spin-chain compound ${\mathrm{Ca}}_3{\mathrm{Co}}_2{\mathrm{O}}_6$.

14 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (7)

• Step-like magnetization in a spin-chain system: Ca3Co2O6
• Metastable states influence on the magnetic behavior of the triangular lattice: Application to the spin-chain compound Ca3Co2O6
• Dynamics of magnetization in frustrated spin-chain systems: Ca${}_3$Co${}_2$O${}_6$
• Tricritical behavior of the frustrated XY antiferromagnet
• Histogram Monte Carlo study of next-nearest-neighbor Ising antiferromagnet on a stacked triangular lattice
• Magnetic structure and phase diagram in a spin-chain system: Ca${}_3$Co${}_2$O${}_6$
• Magnetic Phase Diagram of the Ferromagnetically Stacked Triangular Ising Antiferromagnet

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Low-Temperature Properties of Ising Antiferromagnet on a Stacked Triangular Lattice
• Magnetic field-induced deformation of the spin-density wave microphases in Ca${}_3$Co${}_2$O${}_6$
• Absence of long-range order in a three-dimensional stacked Ising antiferromagnet on kagome lattice
• Thermodynamic and critical properties of an antiferromagnetically stacked triangular Ising antiferromagnet in a field