Abstract
From the practical point of view, a thin ferromagnetic film is a ferromagnetic body presenting a microscopic thickness in contrast with the macroscopic extension of its surfaces and satisfying certain conditions of deposition and oxidation. From an ideal point of view, the thin ferromagnetic film occurs as a many-body system of spins, which is finite in one direction, and which obeys some condition of uniformity and cohesion. A rapid progress of the technology together with a remarkable growth of the interest of physicists brought in the past 20 years the subject of films to a position of prominence in the physics of magnetism. The interest of both engineers and physicists in thin films is mainly stimulated by the exciting fact that a typical thin ferromagnetic film would be the only known single ferromagnetic domain of macroscopic extension. This chapter focuses mainly on critical phenomena and phase transitions on one hand, and elementary excitations on the other. It discusses saturation magnetization, Curie temperature, spin wave spectrum, dispersion laws, and resonant excitations. However, a discussion of the magnetic configurations in thin films with special emphasis on the domain structure as well as references to ripple is also given.
Published Version
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