The dance of the Domains: Excitations in Magnetic Microstructures Studied by X-ray Microscopy

Micron sized magnetic thin film structures have interesting magnetic properties. By adjusting size, shape, and material they can form a multitude of magnetic domain patterns. They consist of homogenously magnetized domains, which are separated by domain walls and magnetic vortices forming at the intersections of the domain walls. We study the static and dynamic magnetic properties of such thin film structures. For this we use synchrotron based Photo Emission Electron Microscopy (PEEM). By combining the naturally pulsed time structure of the synchrotron light with magnetic field pulses to the sample, we are able to study magnetization dynamics with a time resolution of tfwhm<100ps. This allows quantitative analysis of the excitations in such particles which can in turn be compared to simulations based on the Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert equation. We start with simple discs or squares, where three modes connected to the homogenously magnetized domains, the domain walls and the vortex exist. From there we move to more complex objects. For instance, in a rectangular platelet a configuration containing a stable combination of vortices and an antivortex can be created. Such a single cross-tie wall can be understood as being a coupled micromagnetic system with three static solitons. We report on its magnetization dynamics including the vortex-antivortex interactions. The spectrum of eigenmodes is investigated as well as the effect of different vortex core orientations. We show that the vortex dynamics can be used to identify the core configuration which is not directly accessible to x-ray microscopy because of its limited spatial resolution. In the second part we will briefly show the current capabilities for magnetic imaging of the Scanning Transmission X-ray Microscope (STXM) at the PolLux Beamline of the Swiss Light Source as a complementary x-ray based technique.