Thermodynamics of the classical spin triangle

Abstract

The classical spin system consisting of three spins with Heisenberg interaction is an example of a completely integrable mechanical system. In this paper we explicitly calculate thermodynamic quantities as density of states, specific heat, susceptibility and spin autocorrelation functions. These calculations are performed (semi-)analytically and shown to agree with corresponding Monte Carlo simulations. For the long-time autocorrelation function, we find, for certain values of the coupling constants, a decay to constant values in the form of an $1/t$ damped harmonic oscillation and propose a theoretical explanation.