Inverse magnetocaloric effect and phase separation induced by~giant van Hove singularity in itinerant ferromagnetic metal

Magnetic phase separation and magnetocaloric effect is considered within the Hubbard model for face-centered cubic (fcc) lattice with giant van Hove singularity of electron spectrum at band bottom. Within the Hartree-Fock approximation it is shown that such model of itinerant magnet exhibits the~first-order ferromagnet-paramagnet phase transition~(FOPT) with phase separation and inverse magnetocaloric effect deep inside the phase separation region. The thermodynamic theory based on Landau expansion for grand potential for the ferromagnetic-paramagnetic phase transition is developed for phase-separated state. It is rigorously shown that ferromagnetic phase involved in the phase separated state exhibits negative magnetic susceptibility in the vicinity of~tricritical point. Thus, an entropy of the magnetically ordered phase %in the phase separated regime may increase when the magnetic field is applied which implies inverse character of the total magnetic entropy change Δ S. % for the magnetocaloric effect. Temperature dependence of Δ S for the mean-field solution of the non-degenerate Hubbard model is analyzed in detail for different band filling values. The possibility to control Δ S sign by changing both the temperature and the band filling of magnetocaloric materials is demonstrated and this seems to be promising from the point of view of interpretation a lot of experimental data and possible technological applications. It is shown that giant van Hove singularity, being a main cause of phase separation, strongly affects temperature dependence of Δ S in the vicinity of tricritical point.