About "neel"--Antiferromagnetism and magnetic domains

"neel" generalizes the Ising model in two dimensions to include dipolar interactions among the Ising spins. This approximates the behavior of a magnetic system with very strong uniaxial anisotropy. In "nŽeel" the easy axis may be oriented either in the plane of the array of spins or perpendicular to it. The interaction strengths, magnetic field, and temperature may be specified. The spin orientations of a 30x60 array of Ising spins are displayed as the system evolves in time after changes in the applied field and/or temperature. The display includes a graph of magnetization vs. time, and numerical output of average energies, magnetizations, and their mean square deviations.

"neel" was adapted by Joerg Draeger, with help from Dan Vernon, from the "ising" program by Russ Thompson.

About the SSS Project.


Table of contents for Chapter 14 of Simulations for Solid State Physics

  1. Introduction
  2. Antiferromagnetism
    1. Antiferromagnetic domains
    2. Magnetic susceptibility
    3. Mean field analysis*
    4. Other phases
  3. Ferromagnetic domains
    1. Domain size
    2. Hysteresis
  4. Summary
  5. Appendix: "neel" -- the program