Effect of interactions on edge property measurements in magnetic multilayers

This paper reports effects of inter-film interactions on static and dynamic magnetization behavior at film edges in magnetic trilayer stripe arrays under transverse applied fields. The trilayers consist of two magnetic films of Ni(80)Fe(20), 10 nm and 20 nm thick that interact via dipolar fields across thin, nonmagnetic spacers from 1 nm to 20 nm thick. These trilayer films are patterned into stripe arrays by optical interference lithography. Ferromagnetic resonance spectra exhibit separate edge modes that are identified as excitation of edge modes primarily in one magnetic film or the other. When interlayer exchange is negligible, we observe several effects of dipolar edge-edge coupling including shifts of the edge saturation fields and changes in the mode intensity ratio relative to single-film edges. These interaction effects are reproduced by micromagnetic modeling and explained by simple models. (c) 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3553388]