Eur. Phys. J. B 12, 115-118 (1999)
https://doi.org/10.1007/s100510050984

Effective scaling behavior of magnetization and Hamming distance in Ising thin films under a surface field

¹ Departamento de Física, Universidade Federal do Ceará, 60470-455 Fortaleza CE, Brazil
² Departamento de Física, Universidade Federal de Alagoas, 57072-970 Maceió AL, Brazil

Corresponding author: ^a marcelo@ising.fis.ufal.br

Received: 29 March 1999
Revised: 21 April 1999
Published online: 15 November 1999

Abstract

The recent improvements on the technology for developing high-quality thin magnetic films has renewed the interest in the study of surface effects in both static and dynamic magnetic responses. In this work, we use a Monte-Carlo algorithm with Metropolis dynamics together with a spreading of damage technique to study the interplay between the effects of finite thickness and surface ordering field in thin ferromagnetic Ising (S=1/2) films. We calculate, near the bulk critical temperature and several values of the surface field, the dependence on the film thickness of the average magnetization M and Hamming distance D. We employ a finite size scaling analysis to show that both obey an effective one-parameter scaling but exhibit distinct characteristic surface fields. At their corresponding characteristic surface fields both M and D become roughly thickness independent and we estimate the critical exponent characterizing the behavior of the typical scaling lengths.