Micromagnetic predictions for thermally assisted reversal over long time scales

A scaling technique is developed to predict micromagnetic properties of magnetic materials subject to thermal fluctuations over long time scales. This theory, based on the equivalence of time and temperature for thermally activated processes, is tested by predicting hysteresis loops for two different thin film magnetic recording media. A comparison to directly calculated values and to experimental hysteresis loop results shows that important features such as the coercivity are predicted with less than 1% error. (C) 2000 American Institute of Physics. [S0003-6951(00)02550-X].