Electronic and magnetic properties of disordered AuCr alloys: A first-principles study

Abstract In this communication we have studied the electronic structure and magnetism in the disordered alloy AuCr, for compositions in which the Cr concentration is less than 30 at%. The study is an application of a first principles density functional based augmented space recursion technique generalized to study non-collinear magnetic structures. We showed that, at low temperatures but compositions with 15 at% Cr there is a spin-glass phase and the 1Q anti-ferromagnetic ordering stable above compositions of 15 at% Cr. We used the Lichtenstein procedure to map the problem onto a random Ising model and studied the phase diagram using a formalism suggested by one of us earlier. Our results are in excellent agreement with existing experimental data.