Magnetic domain fluctuations in an antiferromagnetic film observed with coherent resonant soft x-ray scattering
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Updated: Jun 3, 2026

Spectral and Angle-Resolved Magneto-Optical Characterization of Photonic Nanostructures
Published on: November 21, 2019
S Konings1, C Schüssler-Langeheine, H Ott
1Van der Waals-Zeeman Institute, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Abstract:
We report the direct observation of slow fluctuations of helical antiferromagnetic domains in an ultrathin holmium film using coherent resonant magnetic x-ray scattering. We observe a gradual increase of the fluctuations in the speckle pattern with increasing temperature, while at the same time a static contribution to the speckle pattern remains. This finding indicates that domain-wall fluctuations occur over a large range of time scales. We ascribe this nonergodic behavior to the strong dependence of the fluctuation rate on the local thickness of the film.
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