Monte Carlo simulation of the irreversible growth of magnetic thin films

CANDIA, JULIÁN; ALBANO, EZEQUIEL V.

JOURNAL OF APPLIED PHYSICS

American Institute of Physics

Lugar: Melville, NY (Estados Unidos); Año: 2001 vol. 90 p. 5395 - 5401

0021-8979

The growth of magnetic films with ferromagnetic interactions between nearest-neighbor spins is studied in (d+1)-dimensional rectangular geometries for d=1,2. Magnetic films are grown irreversibly by adding spins at the boundaries of the growing interface. The orientation of the added spins depends on both the energetic interaction with already deposited spins and the temperature through a Boltzmann factor. At low temperatures thin films, of thickness L, are constituted by a sequence of well ordered magnetic domains. Spins belonging to each domain, of average length lD>>L, have mostly the same orientation, but consecutive domains have opposite magnetization. This kind of ‘‘spontaneous magnetization reversal’’ during the growth process has a short characteristic length lR , such that lD>>lR~L. At higher temperatures, a transition between ordered and disordered states is also observed. The emerging behavior is compared to that of the equilibrium Ising model.