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X-ray magnetic circular dichroism at the Er M4,5 edge is used to study the switching behavior of the hard ErFe2 layers in an epitaxial [ErFe2(70{\AA})/YFe2 (150{\AA})]{\times}25 exchange-spring superlattice. Magnetic hysteresis loops for the Er magnetization, at temperatures T < 200 K, reveal a switching behavior with a single type of irreversible switch corresponding to vertical exchange spring states. Experiments at T > 200 K reveal a crossover to a regime with two types of switching processes. Computational modelling for this system gives a semi-quantitative agreement with the experiment and reveals that the observed high temperature switching behavior is due to a spin-flop like reorientation transition. In contrast to conventional spin-flop transitions in antiferromagnets, in this exchange spring system the increase in anisotropy energy of the hard magnetic layers is overcome by the decrease in Zeeman energy of the soft layers. Computational studies also reveal the presence of transitions between vertical exchange spring and spin-flop states with a first-order character as well as continuous transitions between these states., Comment: 10 Pages 5 Figures

Implanted 3.25 keV Ar+ ions have been used to modify the in-plane bulk anisotropy in thin films of epitaxially grown Laves phase YFe2. The magneto optical Kerr effect, vibrating sample magnetometry and computational modeling have been used to show that the dominant source of anisotropy changes from magnetoelastic in as-grown samples to magnetocrystalline in ion implanted samples. This change occurs at a critical fluence of order 1017 Ar+ ions cm-2. The change in source of the anisotropy is attributed to a relaxation of the strain inherent in the epitaxially grown thin-films. Atomic force microscopy shows that the samples' topography remains unchanged after ion implantation. The ability to control the dominant source of magnetic anisotropy without affecting the sample surface could have important consequences in the fabrication of patterned media for high use in density magnetic data storage devices., Comment: 8 pages, 4 images

Epitaxially grown intermetallic RFe2 (R = Dy, Er, Y) thin films have been studied by point contact Andreev reflection. Spin polarization values were extracted by fitting normalized conductance curves for mechanical Nb/RFe2 point contacts, using a modified Blonder-Tinkham-Klapwijk (BTK) model. Good agreement is found between this model and the experimentally obtained data. Extracted values of spin polarization, which are close to the spin polarization of Fe, reveal no variation with the rare earth component for the measured intermetallic compounds. This suggests that using this technique we probe the Fe sub-lattice, and that this lattice drives spintronic effects in these compounds., Comment: 11 pages, 1 figure. The following article has been submitted to Applied Physics Letters. After it is published, it will be found at http://apl.aip.org/

Magnetization reversal mechanisms and impact of magnetization direction are studied in square arrays of interconnected circular permalloy nanorings using MOKE, local imaging, numerical simulations and transport techniques.

We present studies on magnetic nano-structures with 3D architectures, fabricated using electrodeposition in the pores of well-ordered templates prepared by self-assembly of polystyrene latex spheres. The coercive field is found to demonstrate an oscillatory dependence on film thickness reflecting the patterning transverse to the film plane. Our results demonstrate that 3D patterned magnetic materials are prototypes of a new class of geometrical multilayer structures in which the layering is due to local shape effects rather then compositional differences., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures

We study the interactions of the vortex lattice with a periodic square array of holes in a superconducting Nb film using magnetic and resistive measurements. Three different temperature regions have been observed. They are governed by interplay between vortex-vortex interactions and pinning by holes. At low temperatures flux jumps suppress the commensurability anomalies. In all measurements a peak has been observed close to commensurate states 5-7. The Cole-Cole plot reveals significant changes in the flux penetration mechanism at this point., Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures

We present results of electrochemical deposition of superconducting Pb in the pores of templates prepared by self-assembly from colloidal suspensions of polystyrene latex spheres. This technique enables us to create highly ordered superconducting nano-structures with 3D architectures on length scales ranging from 50 - 1000 nm. The prepared samples show pronounced Little-Parks oscillations in Tc and matching effects in magnetization and magnetic susceptibility. Real and imaginary parts of susceptibility follow a universal Cole-Cole curve. Self-field effects play an important role in commensurability behaviour of magnetic moment at low temperatures., Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures

We study the interactions of the vortex lattice with a periodic square array of holes in a superconducting Nb film. Using high resolution magnetic field measurements of electrical losses, extremely narrow states with a magnetic field width reaching 1% of the matching field value are found at the commensurate points. They are accompanied by pronounced harmonic generation in response to ac modulation of the magnetic field or current. We relate these sharp anomalies to a locked commensurate state of the Mott insulator type., Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures

We study numerically the dynamics of two-dimensional vortex systems at zero temperature. In addition to pinned states and turbulent plastic flow, we find motion of vortices in rough channels along the direction of the driving force. In this decoupled channel regime we demonstrate how topological defects mediate the phase slip of different channels moving with different velocities. We thus provide important confirmation of recent analytical work describing vortex dynamics at high driving forces such as the moving glass theory of Giamarchi and Le Doussal. For the largest driving forces we find that the channels couple and observe elastic motion., Comment: 13 pages, 11 figures, RevTeX, final version, added Refs [15] and [35]

Magnetization and magnetoresistance measurements are reported for antiferromagnetically coupled DyFe$_2$/YFe$_2$ multilayers in fields up to 23 T. We demonstrate that the formation of short exchange springs (~ 2 nm) in the magnetically soft YFe$_2$ layers results in a giant magneto-resistance as high as 32% in the spring region. It is shown that both the magnitude of the effect, and its dependence on magnetic field, are in good agreement with the theory of Levy and Zhang for giant magnetoresistance due to domain wall like structures., Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. Lett

We present simulation results of the moving Bragg glass regime of a driven two-dimensional vortex system in the presence of a smoothly varying weak pinning potential. We study the critical transverse force and (i) demonstrate that it can be an order of magnitude larger than previous estimates (ii) show that it is still observable when the system is driven along low higher-order lattice vectors. We confirm theoretical predictions that the critical transverse force is the order parameter of the so-called moving glass phase, and provide data to support experimentalists verifying the existence of a critical transverse force., Comment: 5 pages RevTeX, incl. 6 Fig, several changes incl. detailed explanation of sigma and Fig. 6

A number of problems arise when long-range forces, such as those governed by Bessel functions, are used in particle-particle simulations. If a simple cut-off for the interaction is used, the system may find an equilibrium configuration at zero temperature that is not a regular lattice yet has an energy lower than the theoretically predicted minimum for the physical system. We demonstrate two methods to overcome these problems in Monte Carlo and molecular dynamics simulations. The first uses a smoothed potential to truncate the interaction in a single unit cell: this is appropriate for phenomenological characterisations, but may be applied to any potential. The second is a new method for summing the unmodified potential in an infinitely tiled periodic system, which is in excess of 20,000 times faster than previous naive methods which add periodic images in shells of increasing radius: this is suitable for quantitative studies. Finally we show that numerical experiments which do not handle the long-range force carefully may give misleading results: both of our proposed methods overcome these problems., Comment: 13 pages, including 9 figures, minor changes only