# Nuclear resonant surface diffraction

## TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel nuclear resonant x-ray diffraction technique in grazing incidence geometry to analyze surface spin structures and magnetic configurations in ferromagnetic nanostripes with high sensitivity.

## Contribution

It demonstrates the use of nuclear resonant surface diffraction to determine lateral magnetic order and surface spin configurations in nanostructures, revealing new insights into magnetic reversal processes.

## Key findings

- Detection of nuclear superstructure diffraction peaks during magnetic reversal
- High sensitivity to surface spin structures and their dynamics
- Identification of antiferromagnetic order in nanostripe lattices

## Abstract

Nuclear resonant x-ray diffraction in grazing incidence geometry is used to determine the lateral magnetic configuration in a one-dimensional lattice of ferromagnetic nanostripes. During magnetic reversal, strong nuclear superstructure diffraction peaks appear in addition to the electronic ones due to an antiferromagnetic order in the nanostripe lattice. We show that the analysis of the angular distribution of the resonantly diffracted x-rays together with the time-dependence of the coherently diffracted nuclear signal reveals surface spin structures with very high sensitivity. This novel scattering technique provides a unique access to laterally correlated spin configurations in magnetically ordered nanostructures and, in perspective, also to their dynamics.