Magnetic Imaging and Microscopy

TL;DR

This paper reviews modern techniques for magnetic imaging and microscopy, emphasizing their capabilities, limitations, and applications across different spatial and temporal scales, including medical imaging uses.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of current magnetic imaging methods, highlighting their advantages, limitations, and diverse applications in physics and medicine.

Findings

Various imaging techniques cover different spatial and temporal resolutions.

Methods include electron microscopy, x-ray microscopy, and scanning probe techniques.

Magnetic effects are also utilized in medical imaging applications.

Abstract

The magnetic domain configuration of a system reveals a wealth of information about the fundamental magnetic properties of that system and can be a critical factor in the operation of magnetic devices. Not only are the details of the domain structure strongly governed by materials parameters, but in thin-films and mesoscopic elements the geometry has an often pivotal effect, providing a convenient handle to tailor desired domain states. Furthermore a full understanding of a system requires, in addition, investigation of the dynamic evolution of the spin-state, which is of particular importance for applications relying on e.g. the switching of magnetic elements. Here we review some of the main modern techniques for magnetic imaging, highlighting their respective advantages and limitations. The methods for imaging domain configurations and spin structures cover various spatial and temporal resolution scales and encompass those based on electron and x-ray microscopy as well as scanning probe techniques. Furthermore, away from the discipline of condensed-matter physics, magnetic effects are instrumental in a number of techniques for medical imaging, some key examples of which we also present.