We use Monte Carlo simulation to study the vortex nucleation on magnetic nanodots at low temperature. In our simulations, we have considered a simple microscopic two-dimensional anisotropic Heisenberg model with term to describe the anisotropy due to
the presence of the nanodot edge. We have considered the thickness of the edge, which was not considered in previous works, introducing a term that controls the energy associated to the edge. Our results clearly show that the thickness of the edge has a considerable influence in the vortex nucleation on magnetic nanodots. We have obtained the hysteresis curve for several values of the surface anisotropy and skin depth parameter ($xi$). The results are in excellent agreement with experimental data.
The existence of nonlinear objects of the vortex type in two-dimensional magnetic systems presents itself as one of the most promising candidates for the construction of nanodevices, useful for storing data, and for the construction of reading and wr
iting magnetic heads. The vortex appears as the ground state of a magnetic nanodisk whose magnetic moments interact via dipole-dipole potential?. In this work it is investigated the conditions for the formation of vortices in nanodisks in triangular, square, and hexagonal lattices as a function of the size of the lattice and of the strength of the dipole interaction D. Our results show that there is a transition line separating the vortex state from a capacitor like state. This line has a finite size scaling form depending on the size, L, of the system as Dc=D0 +1/A(?1+B*L^2)?. This behavior is obeyed by the three types of lattices. Inside the vortex phase it is possible to identify two types of vortices separated by a constant, D=Dc, line: An in-plane and an out-of-plane vortex. We observed that the out-of-plane phase does not appear for the triangular lattice. In a two layer system the extra layer of dipoles works as an effective out-of-plane anisotropy inducing a large S^z component at the center of the vortex. Also, we analyzed the mechanism for switching the out-of-plane vortex component. Contrary to some reported results, we found evidences that the mechanism is not a creation-annihilation vortex anti-vortex process.
