The case of the curious reference

Today, I came across a reference to what is called Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert equation; a little bit of googling got me the reference to Gilbert’s paper:

T.L. Gilbert, A Lagrangian formulation of the gyromagnetic equation of the magnetic field, Phys. Rev. 100 (1955) 1243.

However, when I tried Phys. Rev. site, I got the error message:

Phys. Rev. 100 1243
No data available for this citation

A valid journal, volume, and page or article id are required. Please try again.

So, I thought there probably is something wrong with the page numbers; I thought a Google Scholar search might help me get the correct volume and/or page number. That didn’t help me either:

[CITATION] A Lagrangian formulation of gyromagnetic equation of the magnetization field
TL Gilbert – Phys. Rev, 1955
Cited by 272 – Related Articles – Web Search

Now, that is strange; there is only citation (and, a whopping 272 at that), but, no link to the article itself. Surely, there is no way so many of them got it wrong.

I went back to PROLA and browsed through the volume 100 of Phys. Rev. to find that pp. 1236-1272 are missing; however, the stuff that is published on p.1235 of the issue indicates that the missing pages should contain some abstracts, and probably Gilbert’s paper is one among them.

This suspicion was confirmed when I found this page:

T.L. Gilbert. Phys. Rev., 100:1243, 1955. [Abstract only; full report, Armor Research Foundation Project No. A059, Supplementary Report, May 1, 1956] (unpublished).

Wow! Finally, a couple of researchers who not only took the pains to locate the article (abstract, in this case) but also to note it for those who might be trying to hunt it down.

Of course, I do not understand why Phys. Rev does not host pdf pages of these abstracts in their archive. In any case, a visit to the library helped me get the abstract, which reads as follows:

D6. A Lagrangian formulation of the gyromagnetic equation of the magnetization field. T. L. Gilbert, Armour Research Foundation of Illinois Institute of Technology.–The gyromagnetic equation, , for the motion of the magnetization field , in a ferromagnetic material can be derived from a variation principle, as first shown by Doering.¹ Here is the effective internal field, including the magnetic field and contributions from exchange, anisotropy, and magnetoelastic effects. Using the variational principle, the equations of motion can be recast into a Lagrangian form. This makes possible a consistent derivation of the equations of motion of the magnetization field and other fields to which it may be coupled (e.g., the displacement field of the lattice and the electromagnetic field). It also permits the introduction of viscous damping effects in a consistent manner using the Rayleigh dissipation function. It is shown that viscous damping of the magnetization fields leads to an equation of motion which reduces to the Landau-Lifshitz equation only when the damping is small. It is also shown that this Lagrangian formalism permits the introduction f damping due to disaccomodation in a consistent and very general way.

¹ W. Doering, Z. Naturforsch. 3a, 374 (1948)

So, there are a couple of morals to this story: sometimes, if it is good enough, a paragraph like above can get you hundreds of citations; and, if you find some pages of Phys Rev are missing (before 1955; a note in 1955, Vol. 100, issue 4 notes that they will not be published thenceforth), it probably is an abstract of some meeting, and you can only get it in the hard copy format.

Well, the successful resolution of the mystery calls for a cup of coffee, don’t you think! See you around.

PS: For those of you who are interested in using LLG equation to numerically solve domain evolution in giant magnetostrictive materials (of course, using phase field methods — you knew it was coming, didn’t you?), here is a paper:

Title: Phase-field microelasticity theory and micromagnetic simulations of domain structures in giant magnetostrictive materials

Authors: J.X. Zhang and L.Q. Chen

Abstract:

A computational model is proposed to predict the stability of magnetic domain structures and their temporal evolution in giant magnetostrictive materials by combining a micromagnetic model with the phase-field microelasticity theory of Khachaturyan. The model includes all the important energetic contributions, including the magnetocrystalline anisotropy energy, exchange energy, magnetostatic energy, external field energy, and elastic energy. While the elastic energy of an arbitrary magnetic domain structure is obtained analytically in Fourier space, the Landau–Liftshitz–Gilbert equation is solved using the efficient Gauss–Seidel projection method. Both Fe81.3Ga18.7 and Terfenol-D are considered as examples. The effects of elastic energy and magnetostatic energy on domain structures are studied. The magnetostriction and associated domain structure evolution under an applied field are modeled under different pre-stress conditions. It is shown that a compressive pre-stress can efficiently increase the overall magnetostrictive effect. The results are compared with existing experiment measurements and observations.

Have fun!