Thermal Collapse of Spin Polarization in Half-Metallic Ferromagnets

2005/12/13 by M. Lezaic, Marjana Ležaić, Ph. Mavropoulos +7 · 6 citations
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Heusler alloys: electronic and magnetic properties #Magnetic and transport properties of perovskites and related materials #Rare-earth and actinide compounds #cond-mat.mtrl-sci

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.97.026404

published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 026404 (2006)

arxiv created 2005/12/13 · openalex publication_date 2006/07/13 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30

Abstract

We propose two novel approaches to study the temperature dependence of the magnetization and the spin polarization at the Fermi level in magnetic compounds, and apply them to half-metallic ferromagnets. We reveal a new mechanism, where the hybridization of states forming the half-metallic gap depends on thermal spin fluctuations and the polarization can drop abruptly at temperatures much lower than the Curie point. We verify this for NiMnSb by ab initio calculations. The thermal properties are studied by mapping ab initio results to an extended Heisenberg model which includes longitudinal fluctuations and is solved by a Monte Carlo method.

Citations

• Generalized Gradient Approximation Made Simple

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