Nucleation of stripe domains in thin ferromagnetic films

Abstract

For almost 50 years, the formation of stripe domains in magnetic thin films has been considered as an abrupt magnetization phase transition driven by an interplay of the intrinsic perpendicular anisotropy and the shape anisotropy. This allows the determination of a critical film thickness for a given value of the intrinsic perpendicular anisotropy. The present experimental and theoretical analysis shows that micromagnetic structures such as domain walls and their junctions considerably soften a magnetic thin film. The consequence is a significant reduction of the critical film thickness with respect to the originally derived value.