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Register a new userIntermittent collective dynamics of domain walls in the creep regime
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Added by
Alejandro B. Kolton
Publication date
2018
fields
Physics
and research's language is
English
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We study the ultra slow domain wall motion in ferromagnetic thin films driven by a weak magnetic field. Using time resolved magneto-optical Kerr effect microscopy, we access to the statistics of the intermittent thermally activated domain wall jumps between deep metastable states. Our observations are consistent with the existence of creep avalanches: roughly independent clusters with broad size and ignition waiting-time distributions, each one composed by a large number of spatio-temporally correlated thermally activated elementary events. Moreover, we evidence that the large scale geometry of domain walls is better described by depinning rather than equilibrium universal exponents.
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The dynamics of micrometer-sized magnetic domains in ultra-thin ferromagnetic films is so dramatically slowed down by quenched disorder that the spontaneous elastic tension collapse becomes unobservable at ambient temperature. By magneto-optical imaging we show that a weak zero-bias AC magnetic field can assist such curvature-driven collapse, making the area of a bubble to reduce at a measurable rate, in spite of the negligible effect that the same curvature has on the average creep motion driven by a comparable DC field. An analytical model explains this phenomenon quantitatively.
Recent experimental studies of magnetic domain expansion under easy-axis drive fields in materials with a perpendicular magnetic anisotropy have shown that the domain wall velocity is asymmetric as a function of an external in plane magnetic field. This is understood as a consequence of the inversion asymmetry of the system, yielding a finite chiral Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction. Numerous attempts have been made to explain these observations using creep theory, but, in doing so, these have not included all contributions to the domain wall energy or have introduced additional free parameters. In this article we present a theory for creep motion of chiral domain walls in the creep regime that includes the most important contributions to the domain-wall energy and does not introduce new free parameters beyond the usual parameters that are included in the micromagnetic energy. Furthermore, we present experimental measurements of domain wall velocities as a function of in-plane field that are well decribed by our model, and from which material properties such as the strength of the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction and the demagnetization field are extracted.
Domain walls, optimal droplets and disorder chaos at zero temperature are studied numerically for the solid-on-solid model on a random substrate. It is shown that the ensemble of random curves represented by the domain walls obeys Schramms left passage formula with kappa=4 whereas their fractal dimension is d_s=1.25, and therefore is NOT described by Stochastic-Loewner-Evolution (SLE). Optimal droplets with a lateral size between L and 2L have the same fractal dimension as domain walls but an energy that saturates at a value of order O(1) for L->infinity such that arbitrarily large excitations exist which cost only a small amount of energy. Finally it is demonstrated that the sensitivity of the ground state to small changes of order delta in the disorder is subtle: beyond a cross-over length scale L_delta ~ 1/delta the correlations of the perturbed ground state with the unperturbed ground state, rescaled by the roughness, are suppressed and approach zero logarithmically.
Ferroelectric switching and nanoscale domain dynamics were investigated using atomic force microscopy on monocrystalline Pb(Zr0.2Ti0.8)O3 thin films. Measurements of domain size versus writing time reveal a two-step domain growth mechanism, in which initial nucleation is followed by radial domain wall motion perpendicular to the polarization direction. The electric field dependence of the domain wall velocity demonstrates that domain wall motion in ferroelectric thin films is a creep process, with the critical exponent mu close to 1. The dimensionality of the films suggests that disorder is at the origin of the observed creep behavior.
We present a quantitative and comparative study of magnetic field driven domain wall depinning transition in different ferromagnetic ultrathin films over a wide range of temperature. We reveal a universal scaling function accounting for both drive and thermal effects on the depinning transition, including critical exponents. The consistent description we obtain for both the depinning and subthreshold thermally activated creep motion should shed light on the universal glassy dynamics of thermally fluctuating elastic objects pinned by disordered energy landscapes.
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