Coarsening of antiferromagnetic domains in multilayers: the key role of magnetocrystalline anisotropy

Phys Rev Lett. 2002 Apr 15;88(15):157202. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.88.157202. Epub 2002 Mar 29.

Abstract

The domain structure of an antiferromagnetic superlattice is studied. Synchrotron Mössbauer and polarized neutron reflectometric maps show micrometer-size primary domain formation as the external field decreases from saturation to remanence. A secondary domain state consisting mainly of at least 1 order of magnitude larger domains is created when a small field along the layer magnetizations induces a bulk-spin-flop transition. The domain-size distribution is reproducibly dependent on the magnetic prehistory. The condition for domain coarsening is shown to be the equilibrium of the external field energy with the anisotropy energy.