Soft ferromagnetic films are of great interest both for applications and as a model physical system. Their sensitive response to applied magnetic fields makes them useful for the design of many devices, including inductive or GMR sensors, and magnetoelectronic memory elements. Therefore soft thin films have been the object of much experimental and computational study. The large variety of relatively simple domain patterns they display makes such films a convenient paradigm for analyzing the microstructural origin of magnetic hysteresis. More generally, they provide a crucial example for studying the response of systems evolving through the multiplicity of metastable states resulting from a rough energy landscape.

Details

• Domains
• Numerical simulations
• Comparison with experiments

Selected publications

• A compactness result in the gradient theory of phase transitions A. DeSimone, R. V. Kohn, S. Müller, F. Otto, Proc. Roy. Soc. Edinburgh, 131A 833-844 (2001).
• Magnetic microstructures - a paradigm of multiscale problems A. DeSimone, R.V. Kohn, S. Müller, and F. Otto
• Two-Dimensional Modeling of Soft Ferromagnetic Films A. DeSimone, R. V. Kohn, S. Müller, F. Otto and R. Schäfer
• Low energy domain patterns in soft ferromagnetic films, A. DeSimone, R.V. Kohn, S. Müller, F. Otto and R. Schäfer.