Contribution of spin pairs to the magnetic response in a dilute dipolar ferromagnet

Abstract

We simulate the dc magnetic response of the diluted dipolar-coupled Ising magnet LiHo_(0.045)Y_(0.955)F_4 in a transverse field, using exact diagonalization of a two-spin Hamiltonian averaged over nearest-neighbor configurations. The pairwise model, incorporating hyperfine interactions, accounts for the observed drop-off in the longitudinal (c-axis) susceptibility with increasing transverse field; with the inclusion of a small tilt in the transverse field, it also accounts for the behavior of the off-diagonal magnetic susceptibility. The hyperfine interactions do not appear to lead to qualitative changes in the pair susceptibilities, although they do renormalize the crossover fields between different regimes. The comparison with experiment indicates that antiferromagnetic correlations are more important than anticipated based on simple pair statistics and our first-principles calculations of the pair response. This means that larger clusters will be needed for a full description of the reduction in the diagonal response at small transverse fields.