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E. Vincent

Publications and source records attributed to E. Vincent.

24 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
arXiv1998

Memory and Chaos Effects in Spin Glasses

New low frequency ac susceptibility measurements on two different spin glasses show that cooling/heating the sample at a constant rate yields an essentially reversible (but rate dependent) X(T) curve; a downward relaxation of X occurs during a temporary stop at constant temperature (ageing). Two main features of our results are: (i)when cooling is resumed after such a stop, X goes back to the reversible curve (chaos) (ii) upon re-heating, X perfectly traces the previous ageing history (memory). We discuss implications of our results for a real space (as opposed to phase space) picture of spin glasses.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗
arXiv1997

Non-monotonic field-dependence of the ZFC magnetization peak in some systems of magnetic nanoparticles

We have performed magnetic measurements on a diluted system of gamma-Fe2O3 nanoparticles (~7nm), and on a ferritin sample. In both cases, the ZFC-peak presents a non-monotonic field dependence, as has already been reported in some experiments,and discussed as a possible evidence of resonant tunneling. Within simple assumptions, we derive expressions for the magnetization obtained in the usual ZFC, FC, TRM procedures. We point out that the ZFC-peak position is extremely sensitive to the width of the particle size distribution, and give some numerical estimates of this effect. We propose to combine the FC magnetization with a modified TRM measurement, a procedure which allows a more direct access to the barrier distribution in a field. The typical barrier values which are obtained with this method show a monotonic decrease for increasing fields, as expected from the simple effect of anisotropy barrier lowering, in contrast with the ZFC results. From our measurements on gamma-Fe2O3 particles, we show that the width of the effective barrier distribution is slightly increasing with the field, an effect which is sufficient for causing the observed initial increase of the ZFC-peak temperatures.

cond-mat↗
arXiv1997

Low-Temperature Features of Nano-Particle Dynamics

In view of better characterizing possible quantum effects in the dynamics of nanometric particles, we measure the effect on the relaxation of a slight heating cycle. The effect of the field amplitude is studied; its magnitude is chosen in order to induce the relaxation of large particles (~7nm), even at very low temperatures (100mK). Below 1K, the results significantly depart from a simple thermal dynamics scenario.

cond-mat↗
arXiv1997

A new experimental procedure for characterizing quantum effects in small magnetic particle systems

A new experimental procedure is discussed, which aims at separating thermal from quantum behavior independently of the energy barrier distribution in small particle systems. Magnetization relaxation data measured between 60 mK and 5 K on a sample of nanoparticles is presented. The comparison between experimental data and numerical calculations shows a clear departure from thermal dynamics for our sample, which was not obvious without using the new procedure presented here.

cond-mat↗
arXiv1993

Towards an experimental measure of the number of metastable states in spin-glasses ?

We show that an 'ergodic' time scale can be extracted from the aging experiments on spin-glasses. This is the time for which a significant fraction of the metastable states have been visited. Experiments suggest that the number of metastable states per independent subsystem is $\simeq 10^{12}-10^{14}$. For our insulating spin-glass $({\rm CdCr}_{1.7} {\rm In}_{0.3} {\rm S}_4)$ this number doubles when the temperature is lowered by 1K, but is roughly constant for the metallic sample (Ag:Mn 2.6%).

cond-mat↗