Abstract
The electron spin, which does not explicitly appear in the N-particle Hamiltonian of the solid (except for the spin-orbit coupling and Zeeman terms), will be in the focus of this chapter. In Chaps. 4 and 5 we have addressed already the relevance of spin in connection with magnetic properties, which shall be studied now in more detail. The issue here will be to consider the interacting electron system with dominating exchange interaction, which leads to a spin-ordered ground state, and to describe elementary excitations out of this ground state: spin waves or (in quantized form) magnons. In several aspects spin dynamics is similar to lattice dynamics (see Chap. 3) with the masses coupled by springs now being replaced with spins (or their magnetic moments) coupled by exchange interaction. Depending on the complexity of the crystal structures on which these spin systems are realized, their spin or magnetic order can be ferromagnetic, anti-ferromagnetic, ferrimagnetic, or anti-ferrimagnetic [151]. Most standard textbooks on Solid State Theory contain a chapter on spin waves or magnons and magnetic properties, but there are also special review articles [152,153] and monographs [106,154–160] on these topics. In solids with disorder, e.g. due to alloying, the magnetic order takes the form of spin glasses [16]. Theoretical concepts developed for spin glasses have turned out to be useful also for neural networks [161].
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Werner Heisenberg 1901 – 1976, Nobel prize in physics 1932.
Friedrich Hund 1896 – 1997
Theodor D. Holstein, 1915 – 1985
Henry Primakoff, 1914 – 1983
Nikolai Nikolaevich Bogoliubov, 1909 – 1992
Pierre Curie 1859 – 1906, shared the Nobe prize in physics 1903 with his wife Marie Curie
Louis Néel 1904 – 2000, Nobe prize in physics 1970
Pierre Ernest Weiss 1865 – 1940
Edmund Clifton Stoner 1889 – 1973
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2004 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Rössler, U. (2004). Spin Waves: Magnons. In: Solid State Theory. Advanced Texts in Physics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-09940-7_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-09940-7_6
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-662-09942-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-662-09940-7
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive