We report single-shot measurements of resistance versus time for thermally assisted spin-torque-driven switching in magnetic tunnel junctions. We achieve sufficient sensitivity to resolve the resistance signals leading up to switching, including the variations between individual switching events. Analyses of pre-switching thermal fluctuations allow detailed measurements of coherence times and variations in magnetization precession amplitude. We find that with a small in-plane hard-axis magnetic field the magnetization dynamics are more spatially coherent than for the case of zero field.
@article{arxiv.0906.2476,
title = {Single-shot time-domain studies of spin-torque-driven switching in magnetic tunnel junctions},
author = {Y. -T. Cui and G. Finocchio and C. Wang and J. A. Katine and R. A. Buhrman and D. C. Ralph},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0906.2476},
year = {2015}
}