Abbreviated tutorial exercises on the use of MAXMAGN to determine possible refinable models for a magnetic structure with known propagation vector

It is a known fact that most of the reported magnetic structures are “1-k” magnetic phases, i.e. their magnetic orderings have a single propagation vector. Furthermore, most of them have spin configurations that possess one of the possible maximal magnetic symmetries compatible with its propagation vector. This second property is not well known and its importance and utility has not been yet exploited. The program MAXMAGN makes use of this property in a systematic way by calculating all possible maximal magnetic symmetries and deriving magnetic structural model consistent with them. The assumption of a maximal magnetic symmetry restricts the possible spin arrangements, and limits the number of free parameters or degrees of freedom to be determined experimentally. In simple cases, these restrictions are equivalent to those obtained applying the representation method, but in general they can be more restrictive.