The competition between shape and perpendicular magnetic anisotropies (PMA) in magnetic thin films gives rise to unusual magnetic behaviors. In ferromagnetic films with moderate PMA the magnetic domain configuration transitions from planar to stripe-like domains above a critical thickness, tc. In this article, we present a detailed study of the magnetization switching mechanism in FePt thin films, where this phenomenon is observed. Using micromagnetic simulations and experiments, we found that below tc the reversal mechanism is well described by the two-phase model while above this thickness the magnetization within each stripe reverses by coherent rotation. We also analyzed the PMA and its temperature dependence, probing that substrate-induced strains are responsible for the abnormal coercive field behavior observed for FePt films with t>tc.
@article{arxiv.2302.08538,
title = {Magnetization reversal in FePt thin films: Experiments and simulations},
author = {Augusto Román and Agustín Lopez Pedroso and Karim Bouzehouane and Javier Enrique Gómez and Alejandro Butera and Myriam Haydee Aguirre and Marcio Soares Medeiros and Carlos Garcia and Laura Beatriz Steren},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2302.08538},
year = {2023}
}