title: Coarsening of antiferromagnetic domains in multilayers: the key role of magnetocrystalline anisotropy.
abstract: The domain structure of an antiferromagnetic superlattice is studied. Synchrotron Mössbauer and polarized neutron reflectometric maps show micrometer-size primary domain formation as the external field decreases from saturation to remanence. A secondary domain state consisting mainly of at least 1 order of magnitude larger domains is created when a small field along the layer magnetizations induces a bulk-spin-flop transition. The domain-size distribution is reproducibly dependent on the magnetic prehistory. The condition for domain coarsening is shown to be the equilibrium of the external field energy with the anisotropy energy.
authors.affiliation: KFKI Research Institute for Particle and Nuclear Physics, P.O. Box 49, H-1525 Budapest, Hungary.
authors.forename: D L
authors.initials: DL
authors.lastname: Nagy
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Bottyán
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Croonenborghs
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Deák
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Degroote
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Dekoster
authors.forename: H J
authors.initials: HJ
authors.lastname: Lauter
authors.forename: V
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Lauter-Pasyuk
authors.forename: O
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Leupold
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Major
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Meersschaut
authors.forename: O
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Nikonov
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Petrenko
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Rüffer
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Spiering
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Szilágyi