Amorphous Magnetism Ii

The papers making up this volume represent a summary of the proceedings of the Second International Symposium on Amorphous Magnetism held at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute on August 25- 27, 1976. As a result of the resounding success of the Inter national Symposium on Amorphous Magnetism held at Wayne State University on August 17 and 18, 1972 this symposium was again organized with the purpose in mind of providing a forum for dis cussion of the most recent theoretical and experimental advances made in the fields of spin glass systems, amorphous magnetic alloys and magnetic oxide glasses. The symposium was sponsored by the American Physical Society and supported by a grant from GTE Laboratories. Additional support funds were provided by General Electric, Allied Chemical and Ford Motor Company. The program committee consisted of J. J. Becker (General Electric), P. A. Casabella (RPI), P. J. Cote (Watervliet Arsenal), A. M. de Graaf (Wayne State University), R. Hasegawa, Co-Chairman (Allied Chemical), H. O. Hooper (University of Maine), H. B. Huntington (RPI), R. A. Levy, Chairman (RPI), R. K. MacCrone (RPI), L. N. Mulay (Penn State University), G. L. Salinger (RPI) and J. Wong (General Electric). The program of the symposium included 7 invited review papers, 53 contributed papers, and 10 additional papers read by title because of time limitations. The editors wish to extend their deep appreciation to J. J. Becker, A. M. de Graaf, P. Duwez, J. Gustafson, D. L. Huber, U.

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This book presents some of the methods used in the theory of amorphous magnetism, from a single standpoint that amorphous magnets have a topologically disordered structure of the type given by the dense random packing of hard spheres.The primary aim is to show systematically the present theoretical apparatus in a form which would allow the reader to use it in investigations of still unsolved problems. Even within these limits, the theory of amorphous magnetism is now a very large subject. This book is not designed to review all the developments in this rapidly developing area. It is primarily intended for the novice in this field, rather than the specialist.

This book deals with the basic phenomena that govern the magnetic properties of matter, with magnetic materials and with the applications of magnetism in science, technology and medicine. It is the collective work of twenty-one scientists, most of them from Laboratoire Louis Neel du CNRS in Grenoble, France. The original version, in French, was edited by Etienne du Trémolet de Lacheisserie, and published in 1999. The present version involves, beyond the translation, many corrections and complements.

This unique book provides the reader with the only comprehensive overview of the subject. It is an indispensable reference source in that it attempts to compress into one single volume the whole body of basic and applied research on amorphous magnetic metallic materials. Supplements to the Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials appear regularly keeping the information contained in this book as up-to-date as possible. The book has been designed for easy use and is a must for researchers in the field.

The title of amorphous magnetism was conceived to en compass the study of the magnetic properties of dilute ran dom substitutional alloys, amorphous metallic alloys, amor phous magnetic semiconductors and the conventional glasses, including cha1cogenide, organic and inorganic glasses. These materials have heretofore been considered to be quite different because of the differences in their atomic struc tures. However, when the magnetic behavior of these mater ials is carefully examined it becomes clear that these materials exhibit certain similarities. For the first time at the International Symposium on Amorphous Magnetism held at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan on August 17 and 18, 1972, scientists working in these areas were assembled to examine the similarities of these systems. This volume contains a summary of the 9 invited talks, 23 delivered, contributed papers and an additional 12 contri buted papers whcih were not presented because of insuffic ient time in the program. This volume presents for the first time a collection of the most current theoretical and experimental studies in the area of amorphous magnetism. We wish to thank the authors of these papers for their outstanding cooperation in preparing their manuscripts and for editing our transcriptions from tape recordings of the discussions which followed their presentations. In addition, we wish to thank the participants at this conference whose enthusiasm and interest made the conference so successful.

What is thermodynamics? What does statistical physics teach us? In the pages of this slim book, we confront the answers. The reader will discover that where thermodynami cs provi des a 1 arge scal e, macroscopi c theory of the ef fects of temperature on physical systems, statistical mechanics provides the microscopic analysis of these effects which, invariably, are the results of thermal disorder. A number of systems in nature undergo dramatic changes in aspect and in their properties when subjected to changes in ambient temperature or pres sure, or when electric or magnetic fields are applied. The ancients already knew that a liquid, a solid, or a gas can represent different states of the same matter. But what is meant by "state"? It is here that the systematic study of magnetic materials has provided one of the best ways of examining this question, which is one of the principal concerns of statistical physics (alias "statistical mechanics") and of modern thermodynamics.