Landau-Zener tunneling in multiferroic composites

Abstract

For a coupled ferroelectric/ferromagnetic composite we demonstrate theoretically a mechanism for ferroelectric–ferromagnetic excitation conversion. The switching occurs upon sweeping an external homogeneous magnetic field that modifies the spectrum. We show analytically and by direct numerical simulations that the excitation transfer proceeds via Landau–Zener tunneling: in the case of an abrupt application of the magnetic field (a diabatic regime) there is no transition of excitation energy between the electric and magnetic systems, while increasing the magnetic field slowly (an adiabatic process) an almost complete excitation transfer takes place.