Studies of coupled metallic magnetic thin-film trilayers

Results are reported of a detailed study of static and dynamic responses in symmetric systems consisting of two ferromagnetic films separated by a nonferromagnetic spacer layer. A comparison is made with experimental results for two systems grown by sputter deposition in an UHV chamber, namely, NiFe/Cu/NiFe and Fe/Cr/Fe. First, we present model calculations where the coupling between the magnetic film through magnetic dipolar, bilinear, and biquadratic exchange interactions are fully taken into account, together with surface, in-plane uniaxial, and cubic anisotropies. An analytical expression is given that can readily be used to consistently interpret magnetoresistance, magneto-optical Kerr effect, ferromagnetic resonance, and Brillouin light scattering (BLS) data in such trilayers. Application of the results to BLS data in Ni81Fe19(d)/Cu(25 Angstrom)Ni81Fe19(d), with d = 200 and 300 Angstrom, shows that it is essential to treat the dipolar interaction adequately in moderately thick systems. The results are also applied to interpret very interesting data in Fe(40 Angstrom)/Cr(s)/Fe(40 Angstrom), with 5 Angstrom < s < 35 Angstrom, investigated by the four techniques mentioned above, at room temperature. It is shown that consistent values for all magnetic parameters can be extracted from the data with a theory that treats both static and dynamic responses on equal footing. (C) 1998 American Institute of Physics. [S0021-8979(98)00913-X].