A platform for nanomagnetism - assembled ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic dipolar tubes

Abstract

We report an interesting case where magnetic phenomena can transcend mesoscopic scales. Our system consists of tubes created by assembly of dipolar spheres. The cylindrical topology results in the breakup of degeneracy observed in the planar square and triangular packings. As far as the ground state is concerned, tubes switch from circular to axial magnetization with increasing tube length. All magnetostatic properties found in magnetic nanotubes, in which the dipolar interaction is comparable or dominate over the exchange interaction, are reproduced by the dipolar tubes including an intermediary helically magnetized state. Besides, we discuss antiferromagnetic phases and an interesting intermediary vortex state resulting from the square arrangement of the dipolar spheres.