Glassy behavior in magnetic fine particles

Abstract A detailed study of the static and dynamic magnetic properties of nanocrystalline barium hexaferrite powder was done. Particles of about 10 nm diameter exhibit the main features attributed to glassy behavior. Different results make evident the presence of strong interactions in the studied system. This glassy state is mostly attributed to the frustration induced by magnetic interactions between randomly distributed particles, although the surface spins contribution cannot be discarded. The effective energy barrier distribution obtained from the analysis of the time dependence of the thermoremanence in terms of the T ln (t/τ0) scaling shows a maximum located at energies higher than the mean anisotropy energy barrier. When doing the relaxation experiments after field cooling at increasing fields, the obtained effective energy distribution progressively resembles the anisotropy energy distribution. Therefore, we demonstrate how the glassy state can be erased by applying a magnetic field.