材料期刊网

While the magnetic ground state associated with the step-like magnetization in Ca3Co2O6 remains to be an issue under debate, we investigate the effect of dipole dipole (D D) interaction on the magnetic ground state using the Wang-Landau algorithm. It is revealed that the D D interaction is equivalent to an effective short-range interaction term. An inclusion of this term allows a columnar-state platform and a 1/2 platform in addition to the two-step feature in the magnetization in response to magnetic field, suggesting that the role of the D D interaction in modulating the multistep magnetization in Ca3Co2O6 is non-negligible although our model may not reproduce all the experimentally observed effects. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3676415]