Magnetocaloric effect in systems of itinerant electrons: application to Fe, Co, Ni, YFe2 and YFe3 compounds

In this paper we calculate the magnetocaloric effect in systems of itinerant electrons by using a Hubbard-like model Hamiltonian in which the electron-electron interaction is treated in the mean field approach. The calculated curves of the adiabatic temperature change upon magnetic field variation, for the pure metals Fe, Co Ni, as well as for the intermetallic compounds YFe2 and YFe3 exhibit a good agreement with the available experimental data.