Abstract: Magnetic solitons’ contribution to the specific heat of (CH3)4NMnCl3 in an external magnetic field

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
It has been shown theoretically that linear magnetic systems with planar anisotropy should display nonlinear excitations, i.e., sine‐Gordon solitons upon application of a magnetic field perpendicular to the chain axis. Experimental evidence for ID magnetic solitons has been presented for TMMC from neutron scattering and NMR measurements.1 The classical statistical mechanics of this system predict a soliton contribution to the free energy and thus to the specific heat.2 In order to test experimentally the thermodynamic relevance of magnetic solitons, I performed measurements of specific heat in single crystal TMMC in an external magnetic field up to 10 Tesla, applied both perpendicular and parallel to the chain. The measurements were performed with an adiabatic calorimeter in the temperature range 1.5–15 °K. The results show an extra contribution for H⊥c not present for H∥c. This contribution displays a broad maximum which scales approximately as H/T in agreement with the theory. The maximum occurs just above the peak in the specific heat which is observed in correspondence to the three‐dimensional transition temperature, and it can be clearly resolved only for H⩾5.0 T. The soliton energy obtained by fitting the experiments to the classical theory is Es = 2.0 H for H = 5.39 T and Es = 1.8 H for H = 10 T to be compared with the theoretical value of Es = gμBHS = 3.35 H and with the value obtained by neutron scattering at H = 3.2 T, i.e., Es = 2.6 H. The discrepancy between theory and experiment is discussed in terms of renormalization corrections and of a possible soliton instability occurring for fields between 3 and 5 T. a)Permanent address: Institut di Fisica, Universita di Pavia, 27100 Pavia, Italy. 1J. P. Boucher, L. P. Regnault, J. Rossad Miguod, J. P. Renard, J. Bouillot, and W. G. Stirling, J. Appl. Phys. 52, 1956 (1981). 2K. M. Leung, D. Hone, D. L. Mills, P. S. Riseborough, and S. E. Trullinger, Phys. Rev. B 21, 4017 (1980).

This publication has 2 references indexed in Scilit: