Edward Della Torre

Analysis of wasp-waist hysteresis loops

Wasp-waist and pot-belly hysteresis loops have been observed in many materials. When only the major loop is reported, the results are insufficient to establish which processes are involved. We present two models for wasp-waist materials that produce virtually indistinguishable major loops, but show that first-order reversal curves can be used to separate the effects. In the simplest model, we take a soft magnetic material and a hard material and exchange couple them. When the exchange is positive, the loop is conventional. However, for negative (antiferromagnetic) exchange, the wasp-waist loop is obtained. Negative coupling of two materials with different switching field distributions leads to pot-bellied loops.

Preisach modeling of aftereffect in a magneto-optical medium with perpendicular magnetization

Abstract The aftereffect of Co/Pt multilayer films with perpendicular magnetization has been measured with a magneto-optical Kerr effect (MOKE) magnetometer and calculated with a newly developed Preisach model. Compared to materials such as traditional magnetic recording media, Co/Pt multilayer films show a more complete picture of the progression of aftereffect because the magnetization of this material decays from saturation almost all the way to a ground state in a reasonable length of time. The magnetization measurements for times equal to negative and positive infinity are asymptotically horizontal, with a transition region that is linear on a logarithmic time scale. In contrast, typical published aftereffect analyses exhibit only a very small percentage of the total aftereffect that could be observed if time were not a factor in making measurements. A Preisach–Arrhenius model is used to calculate the magnetic aftereffect in the Co/Pt multilayer. Comparisons of the model to experimental results show not only the validity of the model, but also its value in predicting very short-time and long-time aftereffect behavior, and low levels of aftereffect occurring in noisy data, all of which are difficult to observe experimentally.

Non-Arrhenius Temperature Dependence of Magnetic After Effect

The rate of magnetization change (magnetic after effect) which occurs after the magnetic field applied to a magnetic material is switched suddenly to a new value, is generally assumed to increase when the temperature is increased. Deviation from this temperature behavior, which has been observed in several cases, has been ascribed to changes in pertinent magnetic properties, such as magnetocrystalline anisotropy, activation volume, coercive field, etc., with temperature. We report here on the magnetic after effect temperature dependence of a magnetic recording material with magnetic properties that change very little with temperature over a wide temperature range but which, nevertheless, deviates considerably from a monotonic increase in decay rate with increasing temperature. We postulate that this behavior is explained by replacing the Maxwell-Boltzmann statistics by the Bose-Einstein statistics appropriate for the magnon energy distribution.