Switching dynamics between the metastable ordered magnetic state and a nonmagnetic ground state: A possible mechanism for photoinduced ferromagnetism

Abstract

By studying the dynamics of the metastable magnetization of a statistical mechanical model we propose a switching mechanism for photoinduced magnetization. The equilibrium and nonequilibrium properties of the Blume-Capel model, which is a typical model exhibiting metastability, are studied by mean-field theory and Monte Carlo simulation. We demonstrate reversible changes of magnetization with a sequence of changes of system parameters, which models the reversible photoinduced magnetization. The implications of our results for recent experiments on Prussian blue analogs are discussed.