Direct experimental study of the exchange spring formation process

The remagnetization of a soft ferromagnetic film exchange coupled with a high-coercivity ferromagnetic film is studied by a magneto-optic imaging technique. If the magnetic field is antiparallel to the macroscopic unidirectional inplane anisotropy, the soft layer reverses via the formation of exchange springs consisting of subdomains with opposite spin twistings. However, if the field is instead rotated in-plane, remagnetization initially proceeds via formation of a single uniform exchange spring. Then, at a critical angle, the spring incoherently untwists, leading again to subdomains with opposite chirality. These phenomena are attributed to the influence of inhomogeneity in the unidirectional magnetic anisotropy. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.