Frustration effects in magnetic molecules

By means of exact diagonalization we study the ground-state and the low-temperature physics of the Heisenberg antiferromagnet on the cuboctahedron and the icosidodecahedron. Both are frustrated magnetic polytopes and correspond to the arrangement of magnetic atoms in the magnetic molecules Cu12La8 and Mo72Fe30. The interplay of strong quantum fluctuations and frustration influences the ground state spin correlations drastically and leads to an interesting magnetization process at low temperatures. Furthermore, the frustration yields low-lying non-magnetic excitations resulting in an extra low-temperature peak in the specific heat. (C) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.