Observation of stripe mobility in a dipolar frustrated ferromagnet.
We have discovered two novel aspects of the stripe-domain to paramagnetic transition in perpendicularly magnetized Fe films on Cu(100). First, the width of the stripes carrying oppositely oriented spins decreases, close to the transition temperature, with a power law. Second, in a small temperature interval close to the transition temperature, the stripes--which form stationary patterns at low temperatures--become mobile. Various theoretical works have predicted stripe mobility in similar frustrated systems but no direct proof of this phenomenon has been reported so far.
Laboratorium für Festkörperphysik, ETH Zürich, 8093 Zürich, Switzerland.
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Vaterlaus
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