Dresden 2003 – scientific programme

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MA: Magnetismus

MA 22: Magnetische dünne Schichten III

MA 22.7: Talk

Thursday, March 27, 2003, 11:45–12:00, HSZ/04

SP-STM study of 360^∘ domain walls in an external magnetic field — •Andre Kubetzka, Oswald Pietzsch, Matthias Bode, Stefan Krause, and Roland Wiesendanger — Institute of Applied Physics, University of Hamburg, Jungiusstr. 11, 20355 Hamburg, Germany

The formation and stability of 360^∘ domain walls plays a crucial role in remagnetization processes of thin ferromagnetic films. They are formed in external fields applied along the easy direction of the magnetic material when pairs of 180^∘ walls with the same sense of rotation are forced together. Their stability against a remagnetization into the uniform state is a manifestation of a hard axis anisotropy perpendicular to the rotational plane of the wall [1,2].

In this work we employ spin-polarized scanning tunneling microscopy (SP-STM) to measure the evolution of 360^∘ domain wall profiles in two atomic layers thick Fe nanowires in an increasing external field of B=50–800 mT. It can be shown that in this field range non-local demagnetizing effects are negligible and that the system is well described by a balance of exchange and Zeeman energy within a simple 1D model [2].

[1] E. Magyari and H. Thomas, Phys. Scripta T44, 55 (1992)

[2] H.-B. Braun, Phys. Rev. B 50, 16485 (1994)