Damping in thin NiFe films

We investigated the damping and spin wave creation in thin NiFe films with time-resolved magneto-optic Kerr effect magnetometry for small and large angle excitations. To gain further insight in the underlying damping process we employ a special measurement procedure, which allows us to determine all three magnetization vector components and therefore the length of the magnetization vector. A reduction of the magnitude of the magnetization vector indicates the creation of spin waves. These spin waves can be created directly by the stripline or by multi-magnon processes.
The experimentally determined magnetization trajectory is compared with numerical simulations based on the Landau-Lifshitz equation, and the damping constant is extracted from these simulations