1815 Progress of Theoretical Physics, Vol. 48, No. 6A, December 1972 A Green-Function Theory of an Anisotropic Ferromagnet Motoyuki TANAKA and Yoshiro KONDO* Department of Physics, Faculty of Science Okayama University, Okayama *Department of Physics, Kawasaki Medical College, Kurashiki, Okayama Received May 4, 1972) A Green-funetion approach to investigate magnetic properties of the exchange-coupled system with the uniaxial anisotropy is presented for the case of a ferromagnet. The cen- tral procedure of the method is to treat the Green functions associated with the anisotropy energy adequately without decoupling and obtain 2 set of coupled equations to determine correlation functions and thermodynamic quantities. A method to terminate the chain of equa- tions is proposed for the case of general spin S. The results thus obtained may be applicable to the whole range of intensity of the anisotropy constant. The theory is developed explicitly for the case of S=1, then the correlation functions and the critical temperature in several limiting cases are compared with the reaults of other theories. §1. Introduction ‘As an acceptable method to investigate statistical problems of a Heisenberg ferromagnet, Green functions have widely been used by many authors, Availability of this method is mainly due to the simple procedure to terminate a chain of coupled equations, which appear successively as a consequence of the exchange coupling. A most simple procedure to terminate the chain is that introduced first by Bogolyubov and Tyablikov,” which has since been developed by many authors. Central approximations involved are to neglect correlations between spins located on different lattice sites. This decoupling, called the random-phase approximation (RPA), is known in many respects to lead satisfactory results which should be compared with those resulted in the molecular-field approximation."™™ This method has also been applied to an anisotropic ferromagnet with the one-ion-type uniaxial anisotropy.”"~" Situation is however fairly complicated in this case. The anisotropy term then brings Green functions associated with spin operators on a single site into the problem, thus the adequate treatment of these funetions may necessarily be required. Several efforts in this direction have been attempted. One is that due to Lines,” wherein a procedure to decouple the as. sociated functions at least for the limit of small anisotropy is proposed without explicit justification of its validity. Nevertheless this decoupling is useful in its simplicity and acceptable to lead satisfactory results in this limit of small an- isotropy. The other approaches which may be applicable to an entire range of 8102 soqweseg go Uo ysen6 fq epessel/steL/g/enoensae-sioiue/didjwoo'dno“owopesey'sdiy wow pepeojumog1816 M. Tanaka and Y. Kondo intensity of the anisotropy constant are to treat the Green functions concerned with the anisotropy without decoupling them. Murao and Matsubara® used spin operators and quadrupole moment tensor operators which comprise a complete set in the case of S=1 and obtained a set of coupled equations for Green fune- tions ina closed form, therefore the theory is confined to the case of S=1. Quite recently Haley and Erdés® have developed a new formalism using standard-basis matrix operators and applied the theory to the present problem treating the an- isotropy term exactly. Previous works and problems left unsolved in these Green- function approaches are summarized in this reference, The aim of this paper is to develop a Green-function theory in terms of spin operators for the case of general spin S.® We start here with a usual Green funetion concerned with the transverse spin component and construct a set of coupled equations for the higher-order Green functions in the framework of the random-phase approximation. Green functions involving spin operators on a single site are adequately treated without decoupling, and a principle to terminate the hierarchy of these Green functions is proposed for the case of general spin S. Explicit derivation of the Green functions and correlation functions necessary to investigate the system is shown for the case of S=1. Basic equations to determine these functions and the critical temperature are considerably simplified in the present treatment, and solutions of these equations are compared with the results obtained from other theories in several limiting cases. In particular Lines’ result in the case of small anisotropy is shown to be derived as.a special case of the present treatment. §2. Green functions ‘The ferromagnetic spin system we consider is described by the Hamiltonian H= —% BSF I FSS) —D SEY, @ where the first term stands for the Zeeman energy in the presence of an external applied field H,=0x/ (gis) (unit is chosen as A=1 in the present paper), the second term for the exchange interaction between nearest-neighbouring spins and the third for the single-ion uniaxial anisotropy energy when the preferred axis of spin orientation is chosen along the z-direction of the magnetic field, respectively. To investigate magnetic properties of such a system, we first look for the double-time Green function defined by the equation" (Si @; BY = —19@) [Se @), BD, @) where 6(¢) is a step function such that 6(t)=1 for 2>0 and 0(¢)=0 for £<0, and <--> indicates a canonical average Tr(e~**..-)/Tr(e-**). B, in the equation is an arbitrary spin operator and chosen as Sj, S/S; and in general g(Sj)Sj- in the following sections. The equation of motion for the Fourier transform of ‘102 seqwieseg go Uo ysen6 fq epessel/steL/a/ernoensae-sioiue/didjwoo'dno“owopeseij'sduy wow pepeojumogA Green-Function Theory of an Anisotropic Ferromagnet 1817 the Green function is (o—o)(Sis BY= FAIS Bio $203 CSt0Sit ~S#Sh.0); BD + DQ (SESE + Set); Bid, @ where D}, denotes a sum over all nearest-neighbouring spins. To solve this e- quation various approximations have been applied to higher-order Green functions on the righthand side of the equation. A decoupling procedure usually used to approximate them is to neglect correlations between spins located on different lattice sites (called the random-phase approximation). This approximation re- duces the second term of Eq. (3) to the equation such that 20 YK (Si* ~ Sin) BD ® with ¢=, and the results obtained from this approximation are accepted to excel those from the molecular-field approximation in the description of an isotropic ferromagnet over a wide range of temperature, It may also be possible to apply this decoupling to the anisotropy term on the right-hand side of Eq. (3), as were often attempted previously," and to approximate it as 2D64S;* 5 By) 6) merely because of its mathematical simplicity. However this mean-field treatment of the anisotropy term is shown to lead unsatisfactory results in some cases. For instance we see easily that Eq. (3) in use of Eq. (5) results in a single resonance frequency of ESR such that o=a,+2Do in the single-ion case (J=0) for any magnitude of spin S in contradiction to the result obtained from an exact treatment of the energy level scheme of the system. The ESR pattern obtained will show 2S skeletons for spin S, for example, two skeletons at resonance frequency 0=0)£D for S=1. To take account of the anisotropy contribution adequately, an improved treatment of the anisotropy term of Eq. (3) is thus required. Here we propose a procedure to obtain the Green function ¢S,*; B,) by solving a set of coupled equations for the higher-order Green functions which appear successively. The central procedure of the method is summarized as follows: (i) We neglect in equations correlations between spins on different lattice sites and decouple the corresponding Green functions into lower-order ones. (ii) The anisotropy terms which involve spin operators on a single lattice site such as (S,*(25/+ 1)"; B,) are treated without decoupling and to terminate the chain of equations for these functions, a spin identity st TL, stm (t+) =0, © maH-0 8102 seqweseq go Uo ysen6 fq epessel/steL/g/evnoensae-sioiue/didjwoo'dno“owopesey'sduy wow pepeojumog