Study of bistable behaviour in interacting Fe-based microwires by first order reversal curves

Abstract

Amorphous ferromagnetic Fe-based microwires (MWs) have a magnetic structure consisting mainly of a single longitudinal domain and small closure domains at both ends. A rectangular hysteresis loop is then observed according to the fast domain wall propagation along the microwire. This type of material is a good physical example of the idea of a magnetic relay hysteron as described in Preisach model of hysteresis. The hysteron was defined as a mathematical operator acting on the field and producing rectangular loops whose superposition gives out the hysteresis loop. The hysteron idealization is frequently used to describe and interpret FORC (First Order Reversal Curve) diagrams by comparison with Preisach plane. The central idea of this work is to study the FORCs of a real physical sample that behaves closely to the ideal hysteron, both isolated and interacting with a twofold aim. On one hand, providing a better understanding of FORC measurements, and, on the other, analyzing the magnetization reversal processes in microwires with rectangular hysteresis loops. While for a single microwire the behaviour is that expected for a hysteron, both in the hysteresis loop and in the FORC diagram, the magnetostatic interaction between two microwires breaks with the ideal behaviour due to the change in the domain wall mobility at the end of the wires.