Magnetization and Magnetocaloric Effect in Antiferromagnets with Competing Ising Exchange and Single-Ion Anisotropies

Abstract

The magnetization of a two-sublattice Ising antiferromagnet with easy-plane single-ion anisotropy, which is accompanied by two phase transitions, has been studied. The both phase transitions are induced by the magnetic field. One of them is isostructural, i.e., the system symmetry remains unchanged and a transition between two antiferromagnetic states with different sublattice magnetizations takes place. The other phase transition occurs when the antiferromagnetic state transforms into the ferromagnetic one. At both phase transitions, the field dependence of the system entropy has two successive positive jumps, which is not typical of ordinary antiferromagnets. On the other hand, if the temperature of the system is higher than the tricritical temperature of the isostructural phase transition, there appears a continuous maximum in the field dependence of the entropy.