Magnetic ground and remanent states of synthetic metamagnets with perpendicular anisotropy

Abstract

In this work, we summarize our theoretical results within a phenomenological micromagnetic approach for magnetic ground state and nonequilibrium states as topological magnetic defects in multilayers with strong perpendicular anisotropy and antiferromagnetic (AF) interlayer exchange coupling (IEC), e.g. [Co/Pt(Pd)]/Ru(Ir, NiO). We give detailed analysis of our model together with the most representative results which elucidate common features of such systems. We discuss phase diagrams of the magnetic ground state, and compare solutions of our model with experimental data. A model to assess the stability of so-called tiger tail patterns is presented. It is found that these modulated topological defect cannot be stabilized by an interplay between magnetostatic and IEC energies only. It is argued that tiger tail patterns arise as nuclei of ferro-stripe structure in AF domain walls and that they are stabilized by domain wall pinning.