Past exam of the condensed matter physics major option course of the University of Oxford / 2018 / 3 / d

Below $T_N$, a small perpendicular field produces canting of the two ordered sublattices. In the isotropic two-sublattice mean-field model, the induced component is $B_{\perp }/\lambda$: the reduced ordered moment at higher temperature tilts more easily and the two effects cancel. Thus ${\chi }_{\perp }$ remains constant until the transition.

A field parallel to the maintained ordering axis instead increases the magnitude of one sublattice magnetization and decreases the other. At zero temperature saturated localized spins have essentially no such amplitude response in this model, so ${\chi }_{\parallel }\to 0$. Thermal population changes make it easier to redistribute the longitudinal moments as temperature rises, giving the growing longitudinal susceptibility that meets ${\chi }_{\perp }$ at $T_N$. These directions presume the domain or a weak anisotropy fixes the ordered axis; in a perfectly isotropic freely rotating sample the Néel vector can reorient.

Above $T_N$ there is no chosen magnetic axis, so the response is isotropic. Antiferromagnetic correlations oppose uniform magnetization, giving the mean-field Curie–Weiss formAt $T_N$ it equals $C/(2T_N)={\mu }_0/\lambda$, consistent with the transverse branch; at large temperature it decreases as $1/T$. A negative Weiss temperature characterizes this uniform antiferromagnetic response, rather than a ferromagnetic divergence at positive $T_N$. The illustrative mean-field curves in solution make these limits visible.