Spin waves in Heisenberg antiferromagnetic films with (001), (011), and (111) surfaces

Abstract A theory is presented for the effect of surface orientation on the spectra of localized surface spin waves in antiferromagnetic films. The calculations apply to the exchange-dominated regime and exploit properties of banded matrices to find analytic expressions for the spin-wave frequencies.Results are presented for films with a simple-cubic structure for (0 0 1), (0 1 1), and (1 1 1) orientations of the surface planes. The spin-wave characteristics are found to be quite distinct in the three cases.