Physics of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials

In my ongoing review of the literature in this subject area, I had this book pulled by the library. Let me get the negative aspects of this review out of the way first. The writing style clearly suggests that the book may have been collated from course lecture notes and material. In lectures, material is presented as a part of a lecture, with a lot of spoken words to add explanation and feeling to densely written notes. In this case, the book is densely packed with information, and a little extra text to help explain things would have made things more readable. This is a typical sin in specialized-subject graduate-level texts.

On the positive side, this book covers a good amount of ground in a lot of theoretical detail. To give an idea as to what is covered, here are the chapter titles:

1. Introduction 2. The Origin of Atomic Moments 3. Paramagnetism of Free Ions 4. The Magnetically Ordered State 5. Crystal Fields 6. Diamagnetism 7. Itinerant-Electron Magnetism 8. Some Basic Concepts and Units 9. Measurement Techniques 10. Caloric Effects in Magnetic Materials 11. Magnetic Anisotropy 12. Permanent Magnets 13. High-Density Recording Materials 14. Soft Magnetic Materials 15. Invar Alloys 16. Magnetostrictive Materials

Given what my field is, I was pleasantly surprised to find notes on the manufacturing process for NdFeB permanent magnets. The discussions on domain phenomena seemed complete and helpful. All in all, the theoretical approach to the subject matter gives the book much more of a physicist's feel, rather than the more practical feel of an engineer.

This seems to be a good reference on the subject matter.