Investigating magnetic properties by quantum Monte Carlo simulations

We briefly review the results of recent work establishing a new mechanism for itinerant ferromagnetism in the periodic Anderson model. The novel mechanism, called the segmented band mechanism, whose energy scale is up to two orders of magnitude larger than the RKKY mechanism, is determined by a competition between two energy scales set by certain band features. Here, we report preliminary simulation results studying the effects of band dispersion on these scales and hence on the stability of the ferromagnetic state.