Determination of Ferromagnetic Anisotropy in Single Crystals and in Polycrystalline Sheets

Abstract

Following the work of Akulov and of Heisenberg on the magnetic anisotropy of cubic crystals, it is shown that by taking account of an additional term in the expression for the energy of magnetization the [110] direction may under certain conditions be the direction for easiest magnetization in a crystal, instead of [100] or [111] as given by previous theory. This is in accord with experiment. Magnetization curves for single crystals are calculated using the additional term and some peculiarities are recorded. The anisotropy constant appropriate for a single crystal (of iron) has been calculated from measurements on hard-rolled sheet in which there is preferred orientation of the crystals.