Measurements of Nanoscale Domain Wall Flexing in a Ferromagnetic Thin Film

Abstract

We use the high spatial sensitivity of the anomalous Hall effect in the ferromagnetic semiconductor Ga1-xMnxAs, combined with the magneto-optical Kerr effect, to probe the nanoscale elastic flexing behavior of a single magnetic domain wall in a ferromagnetic thin film. Our technique allows position sensitive characterization of the pinning site density, which we estimate to be around 10^14 cm^{-3}. Analysis of single site depinning events and their temperature dependence yields estimates of pinning site forces (10 pN range) as well as the thermal deactivation energy. Finally, our data hints at a much higher intrinsic domain wall mobility for flexing than previously observed in optically-probed micron scale measurements.

References in corpus (6)

• Theory of Current-Driven Domain Wall Motion: A Poorman's Approach
• Reorientation Transition in Single-Domain (Ga,Mn)As
• Antisymmetric magnetoresistance in magnetic multilayers with perpendicular anisotropy
• Magnetoresistance Anomalies in (Ga,Mn)As Epilayers with Perpendicular Magnetic Anisotropy
• Field-Driven Domain-Wall Dynamics in GaMnAs Films with Perpendicular Anisotropy
• The Influence of Magnetic Domain Walls on Longitudinal and Transverse Magnetoresistance in Tensile Strained (Ga,Mn)As Epilayers

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Dilute ferromagnetic semiconductors: Physics and spintronic structures
• Visualization of superparamagnetic dynamics in magnetic topological insulators
• Pseudo-potentials based first-principles approach to the magneto-optical Kerr effect: from metals to the inclusion of local fields and excitonic effects
• Intrinsic anomalous scaling in a ferromagnetic thin film model
• Nonreciprocal flexural dynamics of Dzyaloshinskii domain walls