Thickness Dependence of the Reorientation Phase Transition

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the thickness of ferromagnetic films influences the reorientation phase transition, providing exact metastability boundaries and analyzing initial instability profiles related to magnetization orientation.

Contribution

It offers an exact analytical determination of metastability boundaries and the initial instability profile as functions of film thickness in ferromagnetic films.

Findings

Metastability boundary equations for in-plane magnetized states

Profile of initial instability normal to film plane

Dependence of instability wave number on film thickness

Abstract

This report examines the thickness dependence of the reorientation phase transition in ferromagnetic films with perpendicular anisotropy. That is, we find the exact boundary of metastability of uniformly magnetized in-plane states as the solution to a set of transcendental algebraic equations, and find the profile of the initial instability in the magnetization in the direction normal to the plane of the film. In general, this instability occurs at a finite wave number k. We determine the dependence of k on the film thickness.