Thermal Stoner-Wohlfarth Model for Magnetodynamics of Single Domain Nanoparticles: Implementation and Validation

Abstract

We present the thermal Stoner-Wohlfarth (tSW) model and apply it in the context of Molecular Dynamics simulations. The model is validated against an ensemble of immobilized, randomly oriented uniaxial particles (solid superparamagnet) and a classical dilute ferrofluid for different combinations of anisotropy strength and magnetic field/moment coupling, at a fixed temperature. We compare analytical and simulation results to quantify the viability of the tSW model in reproducing the equilibrium (with and without dipole-dipole interactions) and dynamic (without dipole-dipole interactions) properties of magnetic soft matter systems. We show that if the anisotropy of a particle is more than five times higher than the thermal fluctuations, tSW is applicable and efficient. This approach allows one to consider the interplay between Néel and Brownian relaxation, often neglected in the fixed point-dipole representation-based magnetic soft matter theoretical investigations.