Exchange-dominated spin waves in simple cubic antiferromagnetic films - art. no. 174431

A study is made of the role of surface orientation in determining the spect ra of surface, spin waves in antiferromagnetic films. The calculations appl y to the exchange-dominated regime and are based on a spin-wave operator an d Green-function technique. The method exploits some properties of banded ( tridiagonal and pentadiagonal) matrices in order to find analytical express ions for the spin-wave frequencies. Theoretical results are presented for f ilms with a simple cubic structure and surfaces corresponding to three diff erent orientations of the crystal planes, namely, (001), (011), and (111), for which the surface spin-wave characteristics are found to be quite disti nct. This work generalizes previous calculations for semi-infinite simple c ubic antiferromagnets with (001) surfaces.