Non-collinear magnetism in iron at high pressures

Fe-bearing MgO [(Mg$_{1-x}$Fe$_x$)O] is considered a major constituent of terrestrial exoplanets. Crystallizing in the B1 structure in the Earth's lower mantle, (Mg$_{1-x}$Fe$_x$)O undergoes a high-spin ($S=2$) to low-spin ($S=0$) transition at $\sim$45 GPa, accompanied by anomalous changes of this mineral's physical properties, while the intermediate-spin ($S=1$) state has not been observed. In this work, we investigate (Mg$_{1-x}$Fe$_x$)O ($x \leq 0.25$) up to $1.8$ TPa via...

The pressure induced bcc to hcp transition in Fe has been investigated via ab-initio electronic structure calculations. It is found by the disordered local moment (DLM) calculations that the temperature induced spin fluctuations result in the decrease of the energy of Burgers type lattice distortions and softening of the transverse $N$-point $TA_1$ phonon mode with $[\bar{1}10]$ polarization. As a consequence, spin disorder in an system leads to the increase of the amplitude ...

We investigate the elastic and isotropic aggregate properties of ferromagnetic bcc iron as a function of temperature and pressure by computing the Helmholtz free energies for the volume-conserving strained structures using the first-principles linear response linear-muffin-tin-orbital method and the generalized-gradient approximation. We include the electronic excitation contributions to the free energy from the band structures, and phonon contributions from quasi-harmonic la...

Recent experiments showed that Co undergoes a phase transition from ferromagnetic hcp phase to non-magnetic fcc one around 100 GPa. Since the transition is of first order, a certain region of co-existence of the two phases is present. By means of \textit{ab initio} calculations, we found that the hcp phase itself undergoes a series of electronic topological transitions (ETTs), which affects both elastic and magnetic properties of the material. Most importantly, we propose tha...

The coexistence pressure of two phases is a well-defined point at fixed temperature. In experiment, however, due to non-hydrostatic stresses and a stress-dependent potential energy barrier, different measurements yield different ranges of pressure with a hysteresis. Accounting for these effects, we propose an inequality for comparison of the theoretical value to a plurality of measured intervals. We revisit decades of pressure experiments on the bcc - hcp transformations in i...

The Fe$_{0.64}$Ni$_{0.36}$ alloy exhibits an anomalously low thermal expansion at ambient conditions, an effect that is known as the invar effect. Other Fe$_{x}$Ni$_{1-x}$ alloys do not exhibit this effect at ambient conditions but upon application of pressure even Ni-rich compositions show low thermal expansion, thus called the pressure induced invar effect. We investigate the pressure induced invar effect for Fe$_{x}$Ni$_{1-x}$ for x = 0.64, 0.50, 0.25 by performing a large...

The magnetic properties of iron (spin and orbital magnetic moments, magnetocrystalline anisotropy energy) in various geometries and dimensionalities are investigated by using a parametrized tight-binding model in an $s$, $p$ and $d$ atomic orbital basis set including spin polarization and the effect of spin-orbit coupling. The validity of this model is well established by comparing the results with those obtained by using an ab-initio code. This model is applied to the study ...

The occurrence of bcc-fcc ($\alpha$-$\gamma$) and fcc-bcc ($\gamma$-$\delta$) phase transitions in magnetic iron stems from the interplay between magnetic excitations and lattice vibrations. However, this fact has never been proven by a direct dynamic simulation, treating non-collinear magnetic fluctuations and dynamics of atoms, and their coupling at a finite temperature. Starting from a large set of data generated by ab initio simulations, we derive non-collinear magnetic m...

High purity iron, which transforms into the hcp phase under pressure, has recently been reported to be superconducing in the pressure range 150-300 kBar [shim]. The electronic structure and the electron-phonon coupling ($\lambda_{ph}$) are calculated for hcp iron at different volumes. A parameter-free theory for calculating the coupling constants $\lambda_{sf}$ from ferromagnetic (FM) and antiferromagnetic (AFM) spin fluctuations is developed. The calculated $\lambda_{sf}$ ar...

First principles density functional calculations for Fe$_{2}$O$_{3}$ has been performed over a wide range of pressures. The ground state is corundum-type hematite and is an antiferromagnetic insulator. This is in good agreement with experiment and other theoretical studies. On increasing pressure, the ground-state high-spin magnetic phase transforms to low spin via the closure of the charge transfer gap. The system also evolves to a new orthorhombic structure. Distorted corun...