Accurate model of the stripe domain phase of perpendicularly magnetized multilayers
Name
PhysRevB.95.174423.pdf
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1.33 MB
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Author(s) • •
Lemesh, Ivan
Beach, Geoffrey Stephen
Buettner, Felix
Date Issued
May 2017
Journal
Physical Review B
Publisher
American Physical Society
Citation
Lemesh, Ivan; Büttner, Felix and Beach, Geoffrey S. D. "Accurate model of the stripe domain phase of perpendicularly magnetized multilayers." Physical Review B 95, no. 174423: 1-16. ©2017 American Physical Society
Version
Final published version
Abstract
We develop an accurate analytical model for the stray field energy of parallel stripe domains in multilayer films with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy, taking into account the effects of finite domain wall width and variable domain wall angle. By minimizing the total energy, we predict the domain width, the domain wall width, and the domain wall angle for given material parameters. We show how the domain wall width depends on the film thickness and the domain size. We explore the domain wall angle as a function of Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI) and derive a threshold value D[subscript thr] beyond which the system is in a Néel state. We find that thicker films require larger values of DMI to stabilize the Néel state. Finally, we test the effective medium theory, which allows treating multilayers as effective single layer films, and provide criteria for the applicability of the model in the presence of both surface and volume stray fields. Our results are supported by micromagnetic simulations, which indicate that the predictions are still precise even if the system is in a labyrinthine domain state. Using our model, otherwise inaccessible magnetic parameters, such as the DMI constant or the exchange constant, can now be obtained straightforwardly from static measurements of the stripe domain width in such films.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Materials Science and Engineering
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.95.174423