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| Author(s): |
Cesar José Calderon Filho
Total Authors: 1
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| Document type: | Master's Dissertation |
| Press: | Campinas, SP. |
| Institution: | Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Física Gleb Wataghin |
| Defense date: | 2011-04-03 |
| Examining board members: |
Gaston Eduardo Barberis;
Mucio Amado Continentino;
Alex Antonelli
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| Advisor: | Gaston Eduardo Barberis; Pascoal José Giglio Pagliuso |
| Abstract | |
In condensed matter physics, the study of strongly correlated electron systems is certainly one of the most interesting problems both from the experimental and the theoretical points of view, also these materials recently being used in technological applications. Among these compounds, the multiferroics show a very rich set of physical properties. These materials have at least two of the following long-range correlations: (anti)ferromagnetism, ferroelasticity and ferroelectricity. However, the transitions need not necessarily to be correlated, but when it happens, they occur simultaneously, and the magnetoelectric effect can be induced by field. In this work, numerical calculations have been developed to simulate the magnetoelectric coupling present in the multiferroics minimizing the energy through Monte Carlo technique. Two simple models have been developed. The first model couples a spin 1/2 2D Ising magnetic lattice with to a 2D lattice of classic electric dipoles; this coupling is such that the change in the spin direction reorients a perpendicular component of the electric dipole neighbor of this same spin. Therefore, for this first model, the phase transitions of the magnetic and electric lattices occur at the same temperature, and the Hamiltonian is dependent of three parameters. For the second model, two lattices have been used again, a 2D Ising lattice for the magnetic system and an electric lattice that also behaves as a 2D Ising lattice. In this case, the coupling between the spin and the electric dipole occurs through a two-level system, generating the possibility of the independent transition temperatures for the two systems. This second model also contains three independent parameters (AU) | |