Monte Carlo simulation of magnetic behavior of a spin-chain system on a triangular lattice

The magnetization behavior and spin configurations of anisotropic triangular spin-chain systems are investigated using Monte Carlo simulations based on two- and three-dimensional Ising models, in order to understand the fascinating magnetic phenomena observed in Ca3Co2O6 compound. By taking into account the strong intrachain ferromagnetic interaction and relatively weak interchain antiferromagnetic interaction, the simulations reproduce quantitatively the temperature-dependent magnetization behaviors against external magnetic field at low temperature. We present the one-to-one correspondence between the magnetizations and the nearest-neighboring pattern-count/spin snapshots, and demonstrate that the steplike magnetizations are ascribed to the inhomogeneous in-plane spin configurations and ferrimagnetically ordered equilibrium state. It is indicated that for the multistep magnetizations that appeared at low temperature, the substeps are always equidistant and the interval of critical magnetic field for spin flip keeps on 1.2 T. However, the inhomogeneity of the spin configurations makes a mean field approach to the magnetization behavior unsuccessful in predicting the multistep magnetizations.