Magnetic properties of a Heisenberg coupled-trimer molecular magnet: General results and application to spin- 1 2 vanadium clusters

We report predictions for the energy eigenstates and inelastic neutron scattering excitations of an isotropic Heisenberg hexamer consisting of general spin S and S′ trimers. Specializing to spin-1/2 ions, we give analytic results for the energy excitations, magnetic susceptibility, and inelastic neutron scattering intensities for this hexamer system. To examine this model further, we compare these calculations to the measured magnetic susceptibility of a vanadium material, which is considered to be well defined magnetically as an isolated S = 1/2 V4+ trimer model. Using our model, we determine the amount of inter-trimer coupling that can be accommodated by the measured susceptibility, and predict the inelastic neutron scattering spectrum for comparison with future measurements.