Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials 213 (2000) 383}388

A computer simulation study on a two-sublattice

magnetic system
Samy H. Aly , Sherif Yehia
*
Department of Physics, Faculty of Science at Demiatta, University of Mansoura, Egypt

Department of Physics, Faculty of Science Helwan, University of Helwan, Cairo, Egypt
Received 8 September 1999; received in revised form 17 November 1999

Abstract

We report on the magnetization, its "rst- and second-"eld derivatives, and torque on a PrCo single crystal using the

two-sublattice model in the mean "eld approximation. The anisotropy energy of the compound is described by "rst- and
second-order anisotropy constants of the Co and Pr sublattices. The structure of the magnetization, its "eld derivatives
and torque fairly supports the working of this model. Comparison with the magnetization behavior, however, in the
absence of canting shows some variance with the two-sublattice model especially as the magnetic saturation is
approached.  2000 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

PACS: 75.30.Gw; 75.60.Ej; 75.40.Mg

Keywords: Two-sublattice model; Anisotropy; Torque; Single crystals; Magnetization; Mean "eld approximation

1. Introduction earth}transition metal (R}T) system is known to be

The magnetic properties of RCo and R Fe B
  
compounds were successfully described by the
two-sublattice model [1}5]. In this model the mag-
netic properties of the compound depend on the
properties of the two-sublattices involved, i.e. their
magnetizations, anisotropies, and inter-sublattice
interaction. Many experimental and theoretical
studies were carried out to clarify the contribution
of respective sublattices to the magnetic properties
of this technologically important class of materials
[6}9]. The spontaneous magnetization of a rare-
* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: hsherif@eis.com.eg (S. Yehia).
the sum of the magnetizations of the respective
sublattices, whereas the anisotropy constants of
such a system may not be simply related to the
anisotropies of its sublattices [10]. Recently, we
reported on the magnetic and thermomagnetic
properties of some R}T systems using the two-
sublattice model [11,12]. In the present work we
report on further studies on PrCo single crystals

using the same model in the mean "eld approxima-
tion. In particular, we study the magnetization,
susceptibility, its "rst-"eld derivative, energy and
torque. We compare some of these properties with
those of a PrCo system whose energy is composed

of only magnetocrystalline and Zeeman energies
without assuming the presence of a canting angle
between the magnetization vectors of the two-sub-
lattices.

0304-8853/00/$ - see front matter  2000 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 3 0 4 - 8 8 5 3 ( 9 9 ) 0 0 8 0 5 - 7
384 S.H. Aly, S. Yehia / Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials 213 (2000) 383}388

2. Theory and computation Minimizing the energy of Eq. (1) with respect to
h gives [11]

The energy density of the two-sublattice uniaxial
JM M sin e#K sin 2h
magnetic system in the presence of an external H"   
magnetic "eld H is given by [1}3,5,11,12] M sin(
!h )
 
 4K sin h cos h
E"JM M cos e# K sinGh #   . (2)
 GH H M sin(
!h )
G H  
Similarly, minimizing E with respect to h gives
! HM cos(
!h ), (1)
H H
H !JM M sin e#K sin 2h
H"  
where J is the exchange parameter (it is negative for M sin(
!h )
the ferromagnetic case in this sign convention),
M and M are the sublattice magnetization vec- 4K sin h cos h
 #  . (3)
tors of the transition metal and rare-earth sublatti- M sin(
!h )
ces, respectively, K are the anisotropy constants of
GH The magnetization is given by:
the j-sublattice with i"1, 2 for "rst- and second-
order, respectively,
is the angle between the c-axis
and the external magnetic "eld H, h is the angle M" M cos(
!h ) (4)
H H H
between M and the c-axis, and e"h !h is the H
H 
canting angle between M and M . It may be for calculating s and ds/dH we use the expressions

mentioned here that the energy expression of Eq. derived by Zhang et al. [3], but we take the sec-
(1) does not contain the dipolar interaction energy ond-order anisotropy constants K and K into
between the two sublattices. It is well known that  
account. We have shown [11,12] that considering
the intrinsic magnetic anisotropy of an R}T system these constants is necessary for more complete de-
could, in general, be the result of contributions scription of the magnetic behavior of these systems.
from spin}orbit and dipolar interactions. The dipo- Let f (h , h ) and g(h , h ) be the functions in the
lar interactions, however, are important in some  
right-hand side of Eqs. (2) and (3), respectively. The
and not all of the R}T compounds [4,14]. For susceptibility s and its "rst-"eld derivative ds/dH
example, Jaswal et al. [14] have shown that the are given by
dipolar contribution to the intrinsic magnetic an-
isotropy of Nd Fe B is zero. KronmuK ller et al. [4] dM ((RM/Rh )#(RM/Rh )(dh /dh ))
  s" "   , (5)
have estimated this contribution to be about 2% of dH ((Rg/Rh )#(Rg/Rh )(dh /dh ))
the crystal anisotropy energy. In some ferrimag-  
netic R}T-based compounds and in magnetic re- ds dM s((Rs/Rh )#(Rs/Rh )(dh /dh ))
" "   .
cording media, the dipolar interactions become dH dH ((RM/Rh )#(RM/Rh )(dh /dh ))
 
signi"cant [4,14,15]. The contribution of the dipo- (6)
lar interactions to the magnetic energy depends on
the magnetizations and volume fractions of the The torque on either sublattice is calculated from
respective sublattices [4]. The hexagonal PrCo Eqs. (2) or (3) as a function of the canting angle
 e and the minimum energy can be directly calcu-
crystal is a cobalt-rich system and therefore the
volume fraction of the Pr sublattice is less than that lated as a function of e using Eq. (1). For the ana-
lysis of a PrCo compound described by three
of the cobalt sublattice. Using the PrCo para-
 
meters (see results and discussion) and the ex- temperature-dependent anisotropy constants we
pression for dipolar interactions, derived by Kron- use the following magnetic energy density:
muK ller et al. [4] showed that the dipolar interaction E"K sin h#K sin h
energy is negligible compared to the anisotropy  
energy. We, therefore do not include it in Eq. (1). #K sin h cos 4
!H ) M. (7)

 S.H. Aly, S. Yehia / Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials 213 (2000) 383}388
Fig. 1. The Magnetization angles h , h and the canting angle

e as a function of the external "eld H applied perpendicular to
the c-axis of PrCo .

The magnetic properties may be deduced from this
expression using the method we described before
[12,13]. Fortran and sometimes Mathematica were
used in our analysis and computations.
3. Results and discussion
Fig. 1 shows the dependence of h , h and the
canting angle e on the external magnetic "eld H for
a PrCo system. The parameters used in the simu-

lation are [2,16]: J"!1500, K "2.0;10 erg/

cm, K "!3.6;10 erg/cm, K " !1.1;
 
10 erg/cm, and K "7.5;10 erg/cm, M "
 
900 emu/cm, M "200 emu/cm and
" linearity in a continuous way until a "eld of
1.57 rad. It is clear from this "gure that the canting
angle is large (e&0.4 rad) even at H"0 kOe. As
the "eld increases the canting angle decreases
reaching zero at "elds 9150 kOe. In these "elds the
magnetization vectors of the two sublattices orient
themselves in the direction of the magnetic "eld i.e.
h "h "p/2. We note that h and h plots have
385
Fig. 2. Magnetization, its "rst- and second-"eld-derivative as
a function of "eld for PrCo .

approximately equal slopes in the "eld range
0}100 kOe and that their "eld dependence is al-
most linear. This behavior in#uences the magnetiz-
ation process as can be seen in Fig. 2 below. It may
be mentioned here that if the external "eld is ap-
plied along the c-axis, the magnetization angles
h and h as well as the canting angle e start, of
course, at the same values shown in Fig. 1, then
decrease reaching zero at H"200 kOe.
The dependence of the magnetization M, the
susceptibility s and its "rst-"eld derivative ds/dH
are shown in Fig. 2 for the same system described in
Fig. 1. The magnetization changes almost linearly,
at "rst, up to H&100 kOe, then deviates from
&150 kOe is reached, at which the canting drops
to zero and the magnetization saturates. The mag-
netic susceptibility, on the other hand, is almost
"eld-independent up to 100 kOe above which
it drops quickly to zero as the magnetization
saturates. The shape of the relation ds/dH
versus H provides an insight into the nature of the
386 S.H. Aly, S. Yehia / Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials 213 (2000) 383}388
Fig. 3. Magnetization as a function of "eld at 77 K for PrCo

without assuming canting (plot a) and assuming canting (plot b).
competition between the exchange and anisotropy
in R}T compounds [3]. The appearance of a single
peak at the anisotropy "eld is suggested to occur in
a system in which either the exchange or the anisot-
ropy dominates the magnetization process. In such
a case the system behaves as a single magnetic
lattice (see for example Refs. [3,11]). On the other
hand, in systems which are adequately described by
the two-sublattice model, a second peak appears in
the low-"eld region of the ds/dH versus H plot. In
Fig. 2 there is a second small peak, in the low-"eld
region, whose high-"eld wing overlaps with the
main peak.
The magnetization curve at ¹"77 K of Fig. 2 is
replotted in Fig. 3 (curve b) together with the mag-
netization curve of PrCo calculated without as-

suming canting (curve a) using the values of K ,
 
K and K from Ref. [16]. At low-"eld values
 
between 0 and 80 kOe as well as for H9150 kOe,
the magnetization behavior in the two cases is very
much similar. For "eld values in the range
80:H:150 kOe the curves deviate. The most
Fig. 4. The Magnetization angles h , h and the canting angle

e as a function of the external "eld H applied perpendicular to
the c-axis for the same system as of Fig. 1 except that
K "#3.6;10 erg/cm.

obvious di!erence between these magnetization
curves is the sharp jump that curve (a) undertakes
close to 150 kOe in contrast with the continuous
increase in magnetization of curve (b). Probably
higher-order anisotropy constants may be needed,
in both models, to bring about a better match
between the magnetization curves of this com-
pound.
In order to study the e!ect of changing the sign
of the anisotropy constant K on the magneti-

zation process we consider a system with the same
parameters used in Figs. 2 and 3 but with K "

#3.6;10 erg/cm. Fig. 4 shows the dependence
of h , h and e on the external magnetic "eld.

Changing the sign of K has no e!ect on the initial

h and h at zero "eld, however the way in which

these angles, and hence the magnetization, change
with the external "eld up to saturation is obviously
di!erent from that described in Fig. 2. The plots
of h and h in Fig. 4 are almost straight and
 S.H. Aly, S. Yehia / Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials 213 (2000) 383}388 387

Fig. 5. Magnetization, its "rst- and second-"eld-derivative as Fig. 6. Energy as a function of canting angle for a PrCo system.

a function of "eld for the system in Fig. 4.

parallel (i.e. canting is nearly constant)up to

H&200 kOe, then the plots deviate from linearity
up to saturation. This behavior is re#ected in H}M
curve of Fig. 5 as well. It is also noted that the
magnetic "eld required to bring e to zero (i.e.
saturation) is 450 kOe which is about three
times as large as the "eld needed to do so in the
case of negative K (Figs. 1 and 2). This

behavior could be explained in the light of the
fact that the cobalt sublattice favors easy axis in
PrCo from 4.2 K up to Curie temperature [6].

Therefore, at 77 K a high-"eld value is required
to saturate the magnetization in the hard direc-
tion when the two anisotropy constants of the co-
balt sublattice are positive. Fig. 5 shows the vari-
ation of s and ds/dH with the "eld. A strong
overlap between two peaks, one close to the
anisotropy "eld and another, peaked in the vicinity
of H&50 kOe, is evident. This shows that the
canting mechanism is also working in this Fig. 7. Torque as a function of canting angle for a PrCo

system. system.
388 S.H. Aly, S. Yehia / Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials 213 (2000) 383}388
It is instructive now to turn our attention to the
minimum energy and torque studies on PrCo

compound. The minimum energy and the corre-
sponding torque are plotted in Figs. 6 and 7, re-
spectively, as a function of the canting angle e.
Taking the reference point of the minimum energy
as its value when the canting is zero, one can see
from Fig. 6 that as the "eld is decreased from H

to zero, passing through a critical value (H&
140 kOe), the energy is decreased at "rst almost
linearly in the range e+0}0.7 rad. In this angular
range the corresponding torque on the magnetiz-
ation vectors increases linearly as well. Beyond this
angular range the torque continues to increase, but
deviating from linearity, until it reaches a max-
imum at e+0.3 rad which is the canting angle
caused by the critical "eld. So at a certain critical
"eld the magnetization vectors su!er a maximum
torque causing them to rotate from their out-of-
basal-plane orientation into a direction parallel to
the magnetic "eld in the basal plane of the crystal.
As the "eld is decreased further down to zero, the
torque decreases quickly, as expected, to zero at
e+0.37 rad.
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