Damping and modal structure of patterned magnetic nanoarrays

Abstract

A number of studies have shown that ferromagnetic resonance linewidths in magnetic thin films contain a significant contribution due to processes, such as inhomogeneous broadening and two-magnon scattering followed by decay to the phonon thermal bath. We present a classical theoretical approach that permits the calculation of such processes for arrays of arbitrarily shaped magnetic nanoparticles and, by comparison with experimental results, demonstrates that the linewidth broadening and damping are dominated by inhomogenities that strongly depend on the equilibrium state of magnetization and can be used to identify the latter. © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.