Magnetic Domains without Domain Walls: A Unique Effect of He^{+} Ion Bombardment in Ferrimagnetic Tb/Co Films.

Abstract

We show that it is possible to engineer magnetic multidomain configurations without domain walls in a prototypical rare-earth-transition-metal ferrimagnet using keV He^{+} ion bombardment. We additionally show that these patterns display a particularly stable magnetic configuration due to a deep minimum in the energy of the system caused by flux closure and a corresponding reduction of the magnetostatic energy without an increase in energy by exchange and anisotropy terms across the walls. This occurs because light-ion bombardment affects an element's relative contribution to the properties of the ferrimagnet differently. Therefore, it is possible to control the relative contribution from each magnetic subsystem. The selection of material and the use of light-ion bombardment allow us to engineer domain patterns in continuous magnetic films, which open a way to fabricate them in a much smaller scale than currently possible. Our Letter emphasizes that the right criterion to determine the presence or absence of a domain wall is whether there is a rotation of the spin for each sublattice and that changes of the direction of effective magnetization alone do not constitute an appropriate criterion.