The influence of possible magnetic inertia effects has recently drawn attention in ultrafast magnetization dynamics and switching. Here we derive rigorously a description of inertia in the Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert equation on the basis of the Dirac-Kohn-Sham framework. Using the Foldy-Wouthuysen transformation up to the order of $1/c^4$ gives the intrinsic inertia of a pure system through the second order time derivative of magnetization in the dynamical equation of motion. Thus, the inertial damping $\mathcal{I}$ is a higher order spin-orbit coupling effect, $\sim 1/c^4$, as compared to the Gilbert damping $\mathrm{\Gamma }$ that is of order $1/c^2$. Inertia is therefore expected to play a role only on ultrashort timescales (subpicoseconds). We also show that the Gilbert damping and inertial damping are related to one another through the imaginary and real parts of the magnetic susceptibility tensor, respectively.

• Received 7 March 2017
• Revised 15 June 2017

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.96.024425