Date of this Version
JOURNAL OF APPLIED PHYSICS 111, 07D507 (2012); doi:10.1063/1.3679605
The atomic origin of micromagnetic damping is investigated by developing and solving a quantum-mechanical relaxation model. A projection-operator technique is used to derive an analytical expression for the relaxation time as a function of the heat-bath and interaction parameters. The present findings are consistent with earlier research beyond the Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert (LLG) equation and show that the underlying relaxation mechanism is very general. Zermelo’s recurrence paradox means that there is no true irreversibility in non-interacting nanoparticles, but the corresponding recurrence times are very long and can be ignored in many cases.