The real-time dynamics of a classical spin in an external magnetic field and local exchange coupled to an extended one-dimensional system of non-interacting conduction electrons is studied numerically. Retardation effects in the coupled electron-spin dynamics are shown to be the source for the relaxation of the spin in the magnetic field. Total energy and spin is conserved in the non-adiabatic process. Approaching the new local ground state is therefore accompanied by the emission of dispersive wave packets of excitations carrying energy and spin and propagating through the lattice with Fermi velocity. While the spin dynamics in the regime of strong exchange coupling J is rather complex and governed by an emergent new time scale, the motion of the spin for weak J is regular and qualitatively well described by the Landau-Lifschitz-Gilbert (LLG) equation. Quantitatively, however, the full quantum-classical hybrid dynamics differs from the LLG approach. This is understood as a breakdown of weak-coupling perturbation theory in J in the course of time. Furthermore, it is shown that the concept of the Gilbert damping parameter is ill-defined for the case of a one-dimensional system. å å a =´++Í t consists of precession terms coupling the spin at site m to an external magnetic field B and, via exchange couplings J mn , to the spins at sites n. Those precession terms typically have a clear atomistic origin, such as the Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yoshida (RKKY) interaction [10-12] which is mediated by the magnetic polarization of conduction electrons. The non-local RKKY couplings J J mn mn 2 c = are given in terms of the elements χ mn of the static conduction-electron spin susceptibility and the local exchange J between the spins and the local magnetic moments of the conduction electrons. Other possibilities comprise direct (Heisenberg) exchange interactions, intra-atomic (Hundʼs) couplings as well as the spin-orbit and other anisotropic interactions. The relaxation term, on the other hand, is often assumed as local, α mn = δ mn α, and represented by purely phenomenological Gilbert damping constant α only. It describes the angular-momentum transfer between the spins and a usually unspecified heat bath.On the atomistic level, the Gilbert damping must be seen as originating from microscopic couplings of the spins to the conduction-electron system (as well as to lattice degrees of freedom which, however, will not be considered here). There are numerous studies where the damping constant, or tensor, α has been computed numerically from a more fundamental model including electron degrees of freedom explicitly [13][14][15] or even from first principles [16][17][18][19][20][21]. All these studies rely on two, partially related, assumptions: (i) the spin-electron coupling J is weak and can be treated perturbatively to lowest order, i.e., the Kubo formula or linear-response theory is employed. (ii) The classical spin dynamics is slow as compared to the electron dynamics. These assumptions appear as well justified but they are also nec...

A classical spin which is antiferromagnetically coupled to a system of strongly correlated conduction electrons is shown to exhibit unconventional real-time dynamics which cannot be described by Gilbert damping. Depending on the strength of the local Coulomb interaction U, the two main electronic dissipation channels, namely transport of excitations via correlated hopping and via excitations of correlation-induced magnetic moments, become active on largely different time scales. We demonstrate that correlations can lead to a strongly suppressed relaxation which so far has been observed in purely electronic systems only and which is governed here by proximity to the divergent magnetic time scale in the infinite-U limit.

-Spin dynamics in the Kondo impurity model, initiated by suddenly switching the direction of a local magnetic field, is studied by means of the time-dependent density-matrix renormalization group. Quantum effects are identified by systematic computations for different spin quantum numbers S and by comparing with tight-binding spin-dynamics theory for the classical-spin Kondo model. We demonstrate that, besides the conventional precessional motion and relaxation, the quantum-spin dynamics shows nutation, similar to a spinning top. Opposed to semiclassical theory, however, the nutation is efficiently damped on an extremely short time scale. The effect is explained in the large-S limit as quantum dephasing of the eigenmodes in an emergent two-spin model that is weakly entangled with the bulk of the system. We argue that, apart from the Kondo effect, the damping of nutational motion is essentially the only characteristics of the quantum nature of the spin. Qualitative agreement between quantum and semiclassical spin dynamics is found down to S = 1/2.Introduction.-The paradigmatic system to study the real-time dynamics of a spin-1/2 coupled to a Fermi sea is the Kondo model [1]. It is mainly considered as a generic model for the famous Kondo effect [2], namely screening of the impurity spin by a mesoscopically large number of electrons in a thermal state with temperature below the Kondo temperature T K ∼ exp(−1/Jρ), where J is the strength of the exchange coupling and ρ is the density of states. The Kondo effect is a true quantum effect which originates from the two-fold spin degeneracy and is protected by time-reversal symmetry. Longitudinal spin dynamics, such as the time-dependent Kondo screening, has been studied recently [3,4] by starting from an initial state with a fully polarized spin, which can be prepared with the help of local magnetic field. The longitudinal dynamics is initiated by suddenly switching off the field.

The thermal activation of magnetization reversal in magnetic nanoparticles is controlled by the anisotropy-energy barrier. Using perturbation theory, exact diagonalization and stability analysis of the ferromagnetic spin-s Heisenberg model with coupling or single-site anisotropy, we study the effects of quantum fluctuations on the height of the energy barrier. Opposed to the classical case, there is no critical anisotropy strength discriminating between reversal via coherent rotation and via nucleation/domain-wall propagation. Quantum fluctuations are seen to lower the barrier depending on the anisotropy strength, dimensionality and system size and shape. In the weak-anisotropy limit, a macrospin model is shown to emerge as the effective low-energy theory where the microscopic spins are tightly aligned due to the ferromagnetic exchange. The calculation provides explicit expressions for the anisotropy parameter of the effective macrospin. We find a reduction of the anisotropy-energy barrier as compared to the classical high spin-s limit.