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Phys. Rev. Lett. 94, 017202 (2005) [4 pages]

Disorder-Induced Microscopic Magnetic Memory

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M. S. Pierce1, C. R. Buechler1, L. B. Sorensen1, J. J. Turner2, S. D. Kevan2, E. A. Jagla3, J. M. Deutsch4, T. Mai4, O. Narayan4, J. E. Davies5, K. Liu5, J. Hunter Dunn6, K. M. Chesnel7, J. B. Kortright7, O. Hellwig8,*, and E. E. Fullerton.8
1Department of Physics, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA
2Department of Physics, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon 97403, USA
3The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy
4Department of Physics, University of California, Santa Cruz, California 95064, USA
5Department of Physics, University of California, Davis, California 95616, USA
6MAX Laboratory, Box 118, SE-221 00 Lund, Sweden
7Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, USA
8Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, San Jose, California 95120, USA

Received 10 November 2003; published 6 January 2005

Using coherent x-ray speckle metrology, we have measured the influence of disorder on major loop return point memory (RPM) and complementary point memory (CPM) for a series of perpendicular anisotropy Co/Pt multilayer films. In the low disorder limit, the domain structures show no memory with field cycling—no RPM and no CPM. With increasing disorder, we observe the onset and the saturation of both the RPM and the CPM. These results provide the first direct ensemble-sensitive experimental study of the effects of varying disorder on microscopic magnetic memory and are compared against the predictions of existing theories.

© 2005 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.94.017202
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.94.017202
PACS:
75.60.Ej, 07.85.Qe, 61.10.–i, 78.70.Dm

*Partially supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft via HE 3286/1-1 and is currently at BESSY GmbH, Berlin, Germany.

 
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