Mn₁₂-acetate, first synthesized in 1980 by Lis, is one example of a class of many molecules called single molecule magnets (SMMs) or molecular nanomagnets. These molecules have several atomic spins strongly coupled together within each molecule. They exhibit interesting quantum mechanical phenomena at low temperatures such as quantum tunneling of magnetization, which was first found with Mn₁₂-acetate in 1996 by Friedman, et al. , and Berry phase oscillations which were measured in Fe8 (another SMM) in 1999 by Wernsdorfer, et al. In addition to possible application as memory storage and qubits for quantum computers, these systems provide the means for studies of mesoscopic physics as well as the interactions of the molecules with their environment, such as phonon, photon, nuclear spin, intermolecular dipole, and exchange interactions.

Mn₁₂-acetate has twelve Mn ions magnetically coupled in the center of the molecule yielding a giant spin of S = 10 at low temperature. It also has a large uniaxial anisotropy of 65 K. Below 3 K, magnetization curves show strong hysteresis due to the anisotropy barrier. At thesis temperatures, the spin relaxes through the barrier by quantum tunneling of magnetization, which produces regularly-spaced multiple resonant steps in the hysteresis curve. Magnetic avalanches, first detected by Paulsen et al., also occur for some samples only at low temperature, leading to a very fast single-step reversal of the full magnetization, which clearly differs from relaxation by tunneling.

In this thesis, I present the results of detailed experimental studies of two aspects of magnetic avalanche phenomenon: "conditions for the triggering of avalanches" and "propagation of the avalanche front". In the first study, we find the magnetic fields at which avalanches occur are stochastically distributed in a particular range of fields. For the second study, we conducted local time-resolved measurements. The results indicate the magnetization avalanches spread as a narrow interface that propagate through the crystal at a constant velocity which is roughly two orders of magnitude smaller than the speed of sound in solids. We argue this phenomenon is closely analogous to the propagation of a flame front(deflagration) through a flammable chemical substance.