Pinning of Domain Walls in thin Ferromagnetic Films

Vincent Jeudy, Rebeca Diaz Pardo, Williams Savero Torres, Sebastian Bustingorry, Alejandro Kolton

Published 2017-09-23Version 1

We present a quantitative investigation of magnetic domain wall pinning in thin magnets with perpendicular anisotropy. A self-consistent description exploiting the universal features of the depinning and thermally activated sub-threshold creep regimes observed in the field driven domain wall velocity, is used to determine the fundamental pinning parameters controlling the domain wall dynamics: the effective height of pinning barriers, the depinning threshold, and the velocity at depinning. Within this framework, the analysis of results published in the literature allows for a quantitative comparison of pinning properties for a large set of magnetic materials in a wide temperature range. On the basis of scaling arguments, the microscopic parameters controlling the pinning: the correlation length of pinning, the collectively pinned domain wall length (Larkin length) and the strength of pinning disorder, are estimated from the pinning parameters controlling domain wall dynamics and the micromagnetic parameters. The analysis of thermal effects reveals a crossover between different pinning length scales at low reduced temperatures.