Coarsening of antiferromagnetic domains in multilayers: the key role of magnetocrystalline anisotropy.
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.
Nagy
D L
DL
KFKI Research Institute for Particle and Nuclear Physics, P.O. Box 49, H-1525 Budapest, Hungary.
Bottyán
L
L
Croonenborghs
B
B
Deák
L
L
Degroote
B
B
Dekoster
J
J
Lauter
H J
HJ
Lauter-Pasyuk
V
V
Leupold
O
O
Major
M
M
Meersschaut
J
J
Nikonov
O
O
Petrenko
A
A
Rüffer
R
R
Spiering
H
H
Szilágyi
E
E