Are Magnons just the van der Waals interaction in Disguise?

Abstract

The MBD model of the van der Waals interaction is extended to also consider magnetic interactions, and it is demonstrated how this can be made to reproduce the Heisenberg Hamiltonian. It is found that this leads to a weak coupling between the charge dipole waves that are the basis for the electric-only van der Waals interaction and the spin-dipole waves (magnons) of the Heisenberg model. By applying the same level of theory to both simultaneously we demonstrate that magnons and charge-dipole waves may both be considered to be a basis for the fluctuating part of the many-body electron density.