Coupled ferro–antiferromagnetic Heisenberg bilayers investigated by many-body Green function theory

A theory of coupled ferro- and antiferromagnetic Heisenberg layers is developed within the framework of a many-body Green function theory (GFT) that allows non-collinear magnetic arrangements by introducing sublattice structures. As an example, the coupled ferro–antiferromagnetic (FM–AFM) bilayer is investigated. We compare the results with those of bilayers with purely ferromagnetic or antiferromagnetic couplings. In each case we also show the corresponding results of mean field theory (MFT), in which magnon excitations are completely neglected. There are significant differences between GFT and MFT. A remarkable finding is that for the coupled FM–AFM bilayer the critical temperature decreases with increasing interlayer coupling strength for a simple cubic lattice, whereas the opposite is true for an fcc lattice as well as for MFT for both lattice types.