Spin waves in rings of classical magnetic dipoles

We theoretically and numerically investigate spin waves that occur in systems of classical magnetic dipoles that are arranged at the vertices of a regular polygon and interact solely via their magnetic fields. There are certain limiting cases that can be analyzed in detail. One case is that of spin waves as infinitesimal excitations from the system's ground state, where the dispersion relation can be determined analytically. The frequencies of these infinitesimal spin waves are compared with the peaks of the Fourier transform of the thermal expectation value of the autocorrelation function calculated by Monte Carlo simulations. In the special case of vanishing wave number an exact solution of the equations of motion is possible describing synchronized oscillations with finite amplitudes. Finally, the limiting case of a dipole chain with N → ∞ is investigated and completely solved.