Vortices in Low-Dimensional Magnetic Systems

Vortices are objects that are important to describe several physical phenomena. There are many examples of such objects in nature as in a large variety of physical situations like in fluid dynamics, superconductivity, magnetism, and biology. Historically, the interest in magnetic vortex-like excitations begun in the 1960s. That interest was mainly associated with an unusual phase-transition phenomenon in two-dimensional magnetic systems. More recently, direct experimental evidence for the existence of magnetic vortex states in nano-disks was found. The interest in such model was renewed due to the possibility of the use of magnetic nano-disks as bit elements in nano-scale memory devices. The goal of this study is to review some key points for the understanding of the vortex behavior and the progress that have been done in the study of vortices in low-dimensional magnetic systems.