Magnetization in narrow ribbons: curvature effects

Abstract

A ribbon is a surface swept out by a line segment turning as it moves along a central curve. For narrow magnetic ribbons, for which the length of the line segment is much less than the length of the curve, the anisotropy induced by the magnetostatic interaction is biaxial, with a hard axis normal to the ribbon and an easy axis along the central curve. The micromagnetic energy of a narrow ribbon reduces to that of a one-dimensional ferromagnetic wire, but with curvature, torsion and local anisotropy modified by the rate of turning. These general results are applied to two examples, namely a helicoid ribbon, for which the central curve is a straight line, and a Möbius ribbon, for which the central curve is a circle about which the line segment executes a twist. In both examples, for large positive tangential anisotropy, the ground state magnetization lies tangent to the central curve. As the tangential anisotropy is decreased, the ground state magnetization undergoes a transition, acquiring an in-surface component perpendicular to the central curve. For the helicoid ribbon, the transition occurs at vanishing anisotropy, below which the ground state is uniformly perpendicular to the central curve. The transition for the Möbius ribbon is more subtle; it occurs at a positive critical value of the anisotropy, below which the ground state is nonuniform. For the helicoid ribbon, the dispersion law for spin wave excitations about the tangential state is found to exhibit an asymmetry determined by the geometric and magnetic chiralities.