The thermally driven formation and evolution of vertex domains is studied for square artificial spin ice. A self-consistent mean-field theory is used to show how domains of ground state ordering form spontaneously, and how these evolve in the presence of disorder. The role of fluctuations is studied using Monte Carlo simulations and analytical modelling. Domain wall dynamics are shown to be driven by a biasing of random fluctuations towards processes that shrink closed domains, and fluctuations within domains are shown to generate isolated small excitations, which may stabilize as the effective temperature is lowered. Domain dynamics and fluctuations are determined by interaction strengths, which are controlled by inter-element spacing. The role of interaction strength is studied via experiments and Monte Carlo simulations. Our mean-field model is applicable to ferroelectric 'spin' ice, and we show that features similar

Nanoparticle‐based magnetic hyperthermia is a well‐known thermal therapy platform studied to treat solid tumors, but its use for monotherapy is limited due to incomplete tumor eradication at hyperthermia temperature (45 °C). It is often combined with chemotherapy for obtaining a more effective therapeutic outcome. Cubic‐shaped cobalt ferrite nanoparticles (Co–Fe NCs) serve as magnetic hyperthermia agents and as a cytotoxic agent due to the known cobalt ion toxicity, allowing the achievement of both heat and cytotoxic effects from a single platform. In addition to this advantage, Co–Fe NCs have the unique ability to form growing chains under an alternating magnetic field (AMF). This unique chain formation, along with the mild hyperthermia and intrinsic cobalt toxicity, leads to complete tumor regression and improved overall survival in an in vivo murine xenograft model, all under clinically approved AMF conditions. Numerical calculations identify magnetic anisotropy as the main Co–Fe NCs’ feature to generate such chain formations. This novel combination therapy can improve the effects of magnetic hyperthermia, inaugurating investigation of mechanical behaviors of nanoparticles under AMF, as a new avenue for cancer therapy.

We consider the probability of a magnetic nanoparticle to flip its magnetisation near the blocking temperature, and use this to develop quasi-analytic expressions for the zero-field-cooled and field-cooled magnetisation, which go beyond the usual critical energy barrier approach to the superparamagnetic transition. The particles in the assembly are assumed to have random alignment of easy axes, and to not interact. We consider all particles to be of the same size and then extend the theory to treat polydisperse systems of particles. In particular, we find that the mode blocking temperature is at a lower temperature than the peak in the zero-field-cooled magnetisation versus temperature curve, in agreement with experiment and previous rate-equation simulations, but in contrast to the assumption many researchers use to analyse experimental data. We show that the quasi-analytic expressions agree with Monte Carlo simulation results but have the advantage of being very quick to use to fit data. We also give an example of fitting experimental data and extracting the anisotropy energy density K.

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Rectangular nanowires may have domain walls nucleated and moved through them to realize many devices. It has been shown that at a particular width and thickness of a nanowire with perpendicular anisotropy, there is a switch from the domain wall being of Bloch-type to it being of Néel-type. This critical shape can be found through micromagnetics simulations, but here we present an analytic calculation for the energies of both wall types involving two iterations for the demagnetizing energy density. The expressions developed are long, but have the advantage that by simply inputting material parameters for the magnetic material, the critical shape can be found using a calculator in a matter of seconds. We compare our results to those found using micromagnetics and those found experimentally and the agreement is good.

We use a Green's function method with Random Phase Approximation to show how magnetic correlations may affect electric polarization in multiferroic materials with magnetic-exchange-type magnetoelectric coupling. We use a model spin 1

We apply the concepts of stochastic thermodynamics combined with the transition state theory to develop a framework for evaluating local heat distributions across the assemblies of interacting magnetic nanoparticles (MP) subject to time-varying external magnetic fields. We show that additivity of entropy production in the particle state-space allows separating the entropy contributions and evaluating the heat produced by the individual MPs despite interactions. Using MP chains as a model system for convenience, without losing generality, we show that the presence of dipolar interactions leads to significant heat distributions across the chains. Our study also suggests that the typically used hysteresis loops cannot be used as a measure of energy dissipation at the local particle level within MP clusters, aggregates or assemblies, and explicit evaluation of entropy production based on appropriate theory, such as developed here, becomes necessary.

Recent experiments on magnetic nanoparticle hyperthermia show that the heat dissipated by particles must be considered locally, instead of characterizing it as a global quantity. Here we show theoretically that the complex energy transfer between nanoparticles interacting via magnetic dipolar fields can lead to negative local hysteresis loops and does not allow the use of these local hysteresis loops as a temperature measure. Our model shows that interacting nanoparticles release heat not only when the nanoparticle magnetization switches between different energy wells, but also in the intrawell motion, when the effective magnetic field is changed because the magnetization of another particle has switched. The temperature dynamics has a highly nontrivial dependence on the amount of precession, which is controlled by the magnetic damping. Our results constitute a step forward in modelling of magnetic nanoparticles for hyperthermia and other heating applications.