Spin melting and refreezing driven by uniaxial compression on a dipolar hexagonal plate

Abstract

We investigate freezing characteristics of a finite dipolar hexagonal plate by the Monte Carlo simulation. The hexagonal plate is cut out from a piled triangular lattice of three layers with FCC-like (ABCABC) stacking structure. In the present study an annealing simulation is performed for the dipolar plate uniaxially compressed in the direction of layer-piling. We find spin melting and refreezing driven by the uniaxial compression. Each of the melting and refreezing corresponds one-to-one with a change of the ground states induced by compression. The freezing temperatures of the ground-state orders differ significantly from each other, which gives rise to the spin melting and refreezing of the present interest. We argue that these phenomena are originated by a finite size effect combined with peculiar anisotropic nature of the dipole-dipole interaction.