An elastic Ising model for a one-dimensional diatomic spin chain is proposed to explain the ferroelectricity induced by the collinear magnetic order with a low-excited energy state. A statistical theory based on this model is developed to calculate the electrical and magnetic properties of Ca3CoMnO6, a typical quasi-one-dimensional diatomic spin chain system. The calculated ferroelectric polarization and dielectric susceptibility show a good agreement with recently reported data on Ca3Co2-xMnxO6 （x ≈ 0.96） （Phys. Rev. Lett. 100 047601 （2008））, although the predicted magnetic susceptibility does not coincide well with experiment. We also address the rationality and deficiency of this model by including a first-order correction which improves the consistency between the model and experiment.
The low temperature specific heat of Sm-AI-Co ternary metallic glasses is investigated and a clear anomaly associated with the Boson peak is identified. While this anomaly depends slightly on the chemical composition, it has no dependence on external magnetic field. To figure out the mechanism of the Boson peak, we interpret the data within various model frameworks. Unlike earlier work, our study shows that this Boson peak is mainly ascribed to an additional T2 term of the specific heat, which may originate from the quasi-two-dimensional and short-range ordered structure units possibly existing in the metallic glasses.
