Biomedical subjects

B Argyle

Publications and source records attributed to B Argyle.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2004

Runaway "fingerlike" instability of magnetic walls in ultrathin layers.

We show that smooth domain walls in ultrathin ferromagnetic films can develop jaggedness even in the absence of random defects when confronted with a sufficiently large tilt between the uniaxial anisotropy direction and the external field. From the Kerr imaging of 0.7 nm thin Co films and from numerical simulations we report a previously unseen runaway fingerlike instability in a magnetic wall that begins on nanoscales but grows to macroscopic lengths for sufficiently large tilt angles. A threshold for the instability is controlled by the ferromagnet's parameters and the applied field.

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PubMed2001

Deroughening of a 1D domain wall in an ultrathin magnetic film by a correlated defect.

Interaction of a field-driven magnetic domain wall with a correlated (line) defect is examined by Kerr imaging in subnanometer thin Co films. The line defect directs and confines the wall near the bottom of the effective potential trough U(eff), which competes with underlying random disorder that roughens the wall. We observe a kinetic "deroughening" with roughness exponent zeta approximately 0.1 well below zeta = 2/3 characteristic of random defects. Deroughening occurs on lengths greater than an inherent elastic screening length L(el), which is consistently explained by the restoring action of U(eff).

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PubMed2001

Stable ultrahigh-density magneto-optical recordings using introduced linear defects.

The stability of data bits in magnetic recording media at ultra-high densities is compromised by the thermal 'flips'--magnetic spin reversals--of nano-sized spin domains, which erase the stored information. Media that are magnetized perpendicular to the plane of the film, such as ultrathin cobalt films or multilayered structures, are more stable against thermal self-erasure than conventional memory devices. In this context, magneto-optical memories seem particularly promising for ultrahigh-density recording on portable disks, and bit densities of approximately 100 Gbit inch(-2) (ref. 7) have been demonstrated using recent advances in the bit writing and reading techniques. But the roughness and mobility of the magnetic domain walls prevents closer packing of the magnetic bits, and therefore presents a challenge to reaching even higher bit densities. Here we report that the strain imposed by a linear defect in a magnetic thin film can smooth rough domain walls over regions hundreds of micrometres in size, and halt their motion. A scaling analysis of this process, based on the generic physics of disorder-controlled elastic lines, points to a simple way by which magnetic media might be prepared that can store data at densities in excess of 1 Tbit inch(-2).

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