Spin Precession and Avalanches

Abstract

In many magnetic materials, spin dynamics at short times are dominated by precessional motion as damping is relatively small. In the limit of no damping and no thermal noise, we show that for a large enough initial instability, an avalanche can transition to an ergodic phase where the state is equivalent to one at finite temperature, often above that for ferromagnetic ordering. This dynamical nucleation phenomenon is analyzed theoretically. For small finite damping the high temperature growth front becomes spread out over a large region. The implications for real materials are discussed.