A second-order semi-implicit method for the inertial Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert equation

Abstract

Electron spins in magnetic materials have preferred orientations collectively and generate the macroscopic magnetization. Its dynamics spans over a wide range of timescales from femtosecond to picosecond, and then to nanosecond. The Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert (LLG) equation has widely been used in micromagnetics simulations over decades. Recent theoretical and experimental advances show that the inertia of magnetization emerges at sub-picoseconds and contributes to the ultrafast magnetization dynamics which cannot be captured intrinsically by the LLG equation. Therefore, as a generalization, the inertial LLG (iLLG) equation is proposed to model the ultrafast magnetization dynamics. Mathematically, the LLG equation is a nonlinear system of parabolic type with (possible) degeneracy. However, the iLLG equation is a nonlinear system of mixed hyperbolic-parabolic type with degeneracy, and exhibits more complicated structures. It behaves like a hyperbolic system at the sub-picosecond scale while behaves like a parabolic system at larger timescales. Such hybrid behaviors impose additional difficulties on designing numerical methods for the iLLG equation. In this work, we propose a second-order semi-implicit scheme to solve the iLLG equation. The second temporal derivative of magnetization is approximated by the standard centered difference scheme and the first derivative is approximated by the midpoint scheme involving three time steps. The nonlinear terms are treated semi-implicitly using one-sided interpolation with the second-order accuracy. At each step, the unconditionally unique solvability of the unsymmetric linear system of equations in the proposed method is proved with a detailed discussion on the condition number. Numerically, the second-order accuracy in both time and space is verified. Using the proposed method, the inertial effect of ferromagnetics is observed in micromagnetics simulations at small timescales, in consistency with the hyperbolic property of the model at sub-picoseconds. For long time simulations, the results of the iLLG model are in nice agreements with those of the LLG model, in consistency with the parabolic feature of the iLLG model at larger timescales.