Searching for activated transitions in complex magnetic systems

The process of finding activated transitions in localized spin systems with continuous degrees of freedom is developed based on a magnetic variant of the Activation-Relaxation Technique (mART). In addition to the description of the method and the relevant local properties of the magnetic energy landscape, a criterion to efficiently recognize failed attempts and an expression for the step magnitude to control the convergence are proposed irrespective of the physical system under study. The implementation is exemplified on a 2D dipolar spin glass, revealing the characteristic energy distribution and the underlying physical processes of the activated dynamics.