Anomalous influence of spin fluctuations on the heat capacity and entropy in a strongly correlated helical ferromagnet MnSi

Abstract

The influence of spin fluctuations on the thermodynamic properties of a helical ferromagnet MnSi has been investigated in the framework of the Hubbard model with the electronic spectrum determined from the first-principles LDA + U + SO calculation, which is extended taking into account the Hund coupling and the Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya antisymmetric exchange. It has been shown that the ground state of the magnetic material is characterized by large zero-point fluctuations, which disappear at the temperature T* (<T_c is the temperature of the magnetic phase transition). In this case, the entropy abruptly increases, and a lambdashaped anomaly appears in the temperature dependence of the heat capacity at constant volume (C_V(T)). In the temperature range T* < T < T_c, thermal fluctuations lead to the disappearance of the inhomogeneous magnetization. The competition between the increase in the entropy due to paramagnon excitations and its decrease as a result of the reduction in the amplitude of local magnetic moments, under the conditions of strong Hund exchange, is responsible for in the appearance of a “shoulder” in the dependence C_V(T)).