Eur. Phys. J. B (2013) 86: 46
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2012-30546-7

Regular Article

Application of the finite-temperature Lanczos method for the evaluation of magnetocaloric properties of large magnetic molecules^*

Department of Physics, Bielefeld University, P.O. box 100131, 33501 Bielefeld, Germany

^a e-mail: jschnack@uni-bielefeld.de

Received: 2 July 2012
Received in final form: 14 November 2012
Published online: 11 February 2013

Abstract

We discuss the magnetocaloric properties of gadolinium containing magnetic molecules, which potentially could be used for sub-Kelvin cooling. We show that a degeneracy of a singlet ground state could be advantageous in order to support adiabatic processes to low temperatures and simultaneously minimize disturbing dipolar interactions. Since the Hilbert spaces of such spin systems assume very large dimensions, we evaluate the necessary thermodynamic observables by means of the finite-temperature Lanczos method.