Experimental Observation of Critical Scaling in Magnetic Dynamic Phase Transitions

Dynamical phase transitions in the XY model: A Monte Carlo and mean-field-theory study

We investigate the dynamical phases and phase transitions arising in a classical two-dimensional anisotropic XY model under the influence of a periodically driven temporal external magnetic field in the form of a symmetric square wave. We use a combination of finite temperature classical Monte Carlo simulation, implemented within a CPU+GPU paradigm, utilizing local dynamics provided by the Glauber algorithm and a phenomenological equation-of-motion approach based on relaxational dynamics governed by the time-dependent free energy within a mean-field approximation to study the model. We investigate several parameter regimes of the variables (magnetic field, anisotropy, and the external drive frequency) that influence the anisotropic XY system. We identify four possible dynamical phases: Ising-SBO, Ising-SRO, XY-SBO, and XY-SRO. Both techniques indicate that only three of them (Ising-SRO, Ising-SBO, and XY-SRO) are stable dynamical phases in the thermodynamic sense. Within the Monte Carlo framework, a finite-size scaling analysis, shows that XY-SBO does not survive in the thermodynamic limit giving way to either an Ising-SBO or a XY-SRO regime. The finite-size scaling analysis further shows that the transitions between the three remaining dynamical phases either belong to the two-dimensional Ising universality class or are first-order in nature. Within the mean-field calculations yield three stable dynamical phases, i.e., Ising-SRO, Ising-SBO and XY-SRO, where the final steady state is independent of the initial condition chosen to evolve the equations of motion, as well as a region of bistability where the system flows to either Ising-SBO or XY-SRO (Ising-SRO) depending on the initial condition. Unlike the stable dynamical phases, the XY-SBO represents a transient feature that is eventually lost to either Ising-SBO or XY-SRO. Our mean-field analysis highlights the importance of the competition between switching of the stationary point(s) of the free energy after each half cycle of the external field and the two-dimensional nature of the phase space for the equations of motion.

Verification of scaling behavior near dynamic phase transitions for nonantisymmetric field sequences

We investigate the scaling behavior of the magnetic dynamic order parameter Q in the vicinity of the dynamic phase transition (DPT) in the presence of temporal field sequences H(t) that are periodic with period P but lack half-wave antisymmetry. We verify by means of mean-field calculations that the scaling of Q is preserved in the vicinity of the second-order phase transition if one defines a suitable generalized conjugate field H^{*} that reestablishes the proper time-reversal symmetry. For the purpose of our quantitative data analysis, we employ the dynamic equivalent of the Arrott-Noakes equation of state, which allows for a simultaneous scaling analysis of the period P and the conjugate-field H^{*} dependence of Q. By doing so, we demonstrate that both the scaling behavior and universality are preserved, even if the dynamics is driven by a more general applied field sequence that lacks antisymmetry.

Metamagnetic fluctuation characteristics near dynamic phase transitions

We experimentally explore the magnetization dynamics of thin ferromagnetic Co films with uniaxial in-plane anisotropy near the dynamic phase transition (DPT) and, in particular, we study the temporal characteristics of anomalous metamagnetic fluctuations that occur in its vicinity, and for which no thermodynamic equivalent exists. For this purpose, we measure the real-time evolution of magnetization trajectories in the relevant dynamic phase space, conduct a Fourier analysis of these experimental results and compare it to a model, in which the fluctuating metamagnetic behavior occurs in a purely random manner, following individual state probability distributions. We find excellent quantitative agreement in between our experimental results and the random state model, clearly indicating that multiperiod time-correlations of magnetic states are not relevant in our DPT system, not even for the occurrence of the anomalous metamagnetic fluctuations that are nonetheless associated with nonperiodic magnetic state evolutions.