Magnetism of small transition-metal clusters and effects of isomerization

We investigate the magnetic properties of small transition-metal clusters using a simple statistical model, which requires some input data from ab-initio spin-density-functional calculations. In our study, we consider a thermodynamically equilibrated ensemble of clusters with different structures, spin multiplicities, and ground-state energies. We calculate the physical properties of this system by weighting the individual configurations according to the Boltzmann statistics. We find that presence of isomers with very similar ground-state energies, yet very different magnetic properties, gives rise to a rich magnetic behavior of the system which differs significantly from what would be expected for single configurations. We apply the present model to determine the magnetic susceptibility of a cluster ensemble of Langevin paramagnets. Our results show that some of the anomalies in the magnetic behavior of transition-metal clusters might be understood in the framework of our model which is, of course, limited by the extremely high computational effort needed to obtain the input data.