Antiferromagnetism

Common card · No. 285592

Antiferromagnetism is a type of magnetic ordering, along with ferromagnetism and ferrimagnetism. In antiferromagnets the individual magnetic dipoles are oriented in a way such that the bulk of the material has a vanishing total magnetization. In the simplest model, as shown in the picture on the right, neighboring moments in an ordered lattice are oriented antiparallel to one another. Since there are multiple ways of arranging magnetic moments on a lattice (especially in three dimensions), there exist various types of antiferromagnetic ordering. By definition, collinear antiferromagnets are Néel-ordered magnets whose magnetic sublattices are related to each other by a combination of symmetries. There are PT-symmetric antiferromagnets, in which magnetic sublattices are connected by translation and/or inversion, and time-reversal operations. Such antiferromagnets are rare in nature. In most antiferromagnets this symmetry is broken, and the magnetic sublattices are connected by a symmetry...

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