Cumulative growth of successive minor hysteresis loops in Co/Pd multilayers with perpendicular anisotropy was studied in the context of time dependent magnetization reversal dynamics. We show that in disordered ferromagnets, where magnetization rever
sal involves nucleation, domains expansion and annihilation, differences between the time dependencies of these processes are responsible for accumulation of nuclei for rapid domain expansion, for the asymmetry of forward and backward magnetization reversals and for the respective cumulative growth of hysteresis loops. Loops stop changing and become macroscopically reproducible when populations of upward and downward nucleation domains balance each other and the respective upward and downward reversal times stabilize.
Measurements of the polar Kerr effect using a zero-area-loop Sagnac magnetometer on Pb/Ni and Al/(Co-Pd) proximity-effect bilayers show unambiguous evidence for the inverse proximity effect, in which the ferromagnet (F) induces a finite magnetization
in the superconducting (S) layer. To avoid probing the magnetic effects in the ferromagnet, the superconducting layer was prepared much thicker than the lights optical penetration depth. The sign and size of the effect, as well as its temperature dependence agree with recent predictions by Bergeret et al..
