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Quasistatic x-ray speckle metrology of microscopic magnetic return-point memory
Michael S Pierce1, Rob G Moore, Larry B Sorensen
1Department of Physics, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA.
Physical Review Letters
|June 6, 2003
Abstract:
We have used coherent, resonant, x-ray magnetic speckle patterns to measure the statistical evolution of the microscopic magnetic domains in perpendicular magnetic films as a function of the applied magnetic field. Our work constitutes the first direct, ensemble-averaged study of microscopic magnetic return-point memory, and demonstrates the profound impact of interfacial roughness on this phenomenon. At low fields, the microscopic magnetic domains forget their past history with an exponential field dependence.