Berlin 2018 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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MA: Fachverband Magnetismus

MA 42: Thin films – anisotropy

MA 42.10: Vortrag

Donnerstag, 15. März 2018, 12:00–12:15, EB 301

Nucleation of stripe domains in ferromagnetic thin films — •Sukhvinder Singh, Haibin Gao, and Uwe Hartmann — Institute of Experimental Physics, Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany

Since the first observation of stripe domains in ferromagnetic films, i.e., about 50 years ago [1], the formation of these domains was considered as an abrupt transition from the in-plane to a partly out-of-plane magnetization. Domains separated either by Néel or cross-tie domain walls were supposed to be abruptly superimposed by stripes. We found that stripe domains evolve from the domain walls at a thickness well below the critical thickness [2,3]. The latter was so far considered as a threshold for the formation of stripe domains. Local modifications induced by a perpendicular anisotropy inside the domain walls and wall junctions were observed in detail. A periodically oscillating out-of-plane magnetization is formed inside the walls. This expands throughout the in-plane domains to form stripe domains all over the film. On the basis of our work, the widely used domain phase diagram [3] can now be refined.

[1] N. Saito, H. Fujiwara, and Y. Sugita, J. Phys. Soc. Jpn. 19, 1116 (1964).

[2] F. Virot, L. Favre, R. Hayn, and M. D. Kuzmin, J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. 45, 405003 (2012).

[3] A. Holz and H. Kronmüller, Phys. Stat. Sol. (b) 31, 787 (1969).