Magnetic susceptibility | EPFL Graph Search

In electromagnetism, the magnetic susceptibility (; denoted χ, chi) is a measure of how much a material will become magnetized in an applied magnetic field. It is the ratio of magnetization M (magnetic moment per unit volume) to the applied magnetizing field intensity H. This allows a simple classification, into two categories, of most materials' responses to an applied magnetic field: an alignment with the magnetic field, χ > 0, called paramagnetism, or an alignment against the field, χ < 0, called diamagnetism. Magnetic susceptibility indicates whether a material is attracted into or repelled out of a magnetic field. Paramagnetic materials align with the applied field and are attracted to regions of greater magnetic field. Diamagnetic materials are anti-aligned and are pushed away, toward regions of lower magnetic fields. On top of the applied field, the magnetization of the material adds its own magnetic field, causing the field lines to concentrate in paramagnetism,

Electric Field Effects in the Skyrmion Lattice Hosting Magnet Cu2OSeO3

Saumya Shivam

Magnetic skyrmions have garnered much attention in recent years because of their non trivial topology and potential to be used in next generation memory devices. They may exist individually or as a lattice of skyrmions(SkL). A number of investigations have been done on SkL in metallic samples, but recently a few magnetoelectric insulators have also begun to attract a lot of attention. The magnetoelectric nature of these materials presents a possibility to make prototype memory devices where skyrmions form a storage bit and can be controlled with only electric fields without the losses caused by Joule heating. We focus here on the material Cu2OSeO3, for which interesting electric field effects have been seen like the control of size of the region in the phase diagram where SkL is stable, creation of metastable skyrmions and the use of magnetolectric susceptibility to map the phase diagram. We use the magnetoelectric susceptibility to explore the above mentioned effects of electric fields, attempting to confirm previous reports of such effects using different techniques like neutron scattering and AC susceptibility. We also propose a new design to create metastable SkL state at low temperatures and confirm its existence using magnetoelectric susceptibility. We also attempt to measure the change in polarization between the SkL phase and the trivial phase on application of DC electric fields, which in principle could lead to electrical readout of skyrmions in a prototype skyrmion based memory device.

2018

From quantum glass to addressable spin clusters in the model magnet LiHoxY1−xF4

Tatjana Hählen

This report describes an AC-susceptibility study on

LiHo_xY_{1−x}F_4

LiHo_xY_{1−x}F_4 has different phases depending on the concentration x of holmium. Pure

LiHoF_4

is a ferromagnet, at concentrations of

x \approx 0.20

it is a spin glass and at concentrations of

x \approx 0.05

it becomes a spin liquid. The crystal studied here is

LiHo_ {0.04}Y_{0.96}F_4. In this spin liquid phase it shows several interesting properties which differ from ordinary spin glasses. Its spectral width of the imaginary part of the magnetic susceptibility

\chi^{''} narrows with decreasing temperature contrary to spin glasses. We measured the real

\chi^{'}

and the imaginary part

\chi^ {''}

of the magnetic susceptibility at different temperature and over a frequency range of 5 decades. The data are an extension to higher temperature of already existing data and match well with them in the overlapping temperatures. Our data shows well the trend the shift of the peak of the response function for

\chi^{''}

to higher frequencies and the decrease of the peak amplitude with increasing temperature. Also the cut of frequency for

\chi^ {'}$ increases with temperature. This is in agreement with the existing data at lower temperature.

2007

Second harmonic scattering of water in a biological context

Tereza Schönfeldová

Water is one of the most abundant molecules in the universe. It forms a hydrogen bond network with unique structure and dynamics. Hydrogen bonding is highly relevant to many biological processes including membrane formation, protein folding, adsorption, and lubrication. However, the underlying molecular interactions within water and between water and membranes are difficult to study and hence not fully understood. In this thesis, we utilize second harmonic scattering (SHS) to investigate inhomogeneities in bulk water, probe structural changes in lipid bilayer membranes, and detect and characterize protein-membrane interactions. Firstly, we explore the structure of bulk water in comparison to a common model liquid, carbon tetrachloride. Combining SHS measurements and molecular dynamics simulations, we report on the nanoscale inhomogeneities in bulk water that occur on femtosecond timescales. We attribute the rise in the coherent second harmonic (SH) intensity to charge density fluctuations with enhanced nanoscale polarizabilities around transient voids. Even though the transient voids also exist in carbon tetrachloride, they do not show polarizability fluctuations and the SH response of carbon tetrachloride thus corresponds to that of a model isotropic liquid. Then, we study the structure of water around large unilamellar vesicles (LUVs), which serve as a model for cell membranes. We focus on the role of water during the lipid melting phase transition. Using SHS, differential scanning calorimetry, and temperature-dependent zeta-potential measurements, we investigate the structural changes of hydration shells around the vesicle membrane. We use lipids with phosphoserine, phosphocholine, and phosphate headgroups and observe different hydration behavior upon the lipid melting transition depending on the membrane composition. Next, we characterize the interface of membranes composed of lipids containing phosphocholine and phosphate headgroups in solutions with different CaCl2 concentrations. We observe that the SH intensity is decreasing with the addition of CaCl2, which we attribute to the formation of a condensed layer of Na+ counterions on the inner leaflet of the LUVs. Additionally, we extract the vesicle surface potential and second-order surface susceptibility from SHS data for membranes with different content of lipids with phosphate headgroups, and observe composition dependent behaviour which suggests structural membrane reorganization. We continue by exploring protein-membrane interactions using water as a contrast agent. We study a pore-forming toxin, perfringolysin O (PFO), known for selective insertion into cholesterol-rich membranes. Combining SHS measurements and cryo-electron microscopy, we compare the interaction between PFO and LUV membranes with a high and low cholesterol content. By obtaining a sub-picomolar insertion constant of PFO, we show that SHS can be used to determine protein-membrane binding constants in concentration ranges not accessible by conventional methods.Finally, we investigate the interaction of protein aerolysin and its mutants with lipid membranes. We observe changes in surface charge in the cap region of membrane-bound aerolysin at different pH of the surrounding solution. By combining SHS with single-channel measurements, we obtain the membrane binding constant of wild-type aerolysin and its mutants, and we dissect their pore-forming mechanism.

EPFL2022