Abstract
We have investigated the magnetic properties of epitaxially grown $\mathrm{Fe}∕\mathrm{NiO}∕\mathrm{Fe}(001)$ trilayers for different thickness combinations of the NiO spacer and of the Fe overlayer. The magneto optical Kerr effect has been exploited to study the in-plane magnetization reversal processes in the iron layers. Further information has been obtained by means of spin polarized inverse photoemission spectroscopy. We show the existence of a critical value ${t}_{\mathrm{c}}$ of the NiO thickness ${t}_{\mathrm{AFM}}$ for the magnetic coupling between the Fe layers at zero applied field: for ${t}_{\mathrm{AFM}}l{t}_{\mathrm{c}}$ the magnetization directions align perpendicularly, while the alignment is collinear for thicker spacers. A phenomenological model has been developed to reproduce the reversal properties of the trilayer and determine the dependence of the coupling energy between the Fe ferromagnetic layers as a function of their relative orientation. We find that the observed behavior cannot be reproduced by a Slonczewski's coupling term, but rather it is obtained when a biquadratic term is employed.
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