Topological defects and misfit strain in magnetic stripe domains of lateral multilayers with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy

Stripe domains are studied in perpendicular magnetic anisotropy films nanostructured with a periodic thickness modulation that induces the lateral modulation of both stripe periods and inplane magnetization. The resulting system is the 2D equivalent of a strained superlattice with properties controlled by interfacial misfit strain within the magnetic stripe structure and shape anisotropy. This allows us to observe, experimentally for the first time, the continuous structural transformation of a grain boundary in this 2D magnetic crystal in the whole angular range. The magnetization reversal process can be tailored through the effect of misfit strain due to the coupling between disclinations in the magnetic stripe pattern and domain walls in the in-plane magnetization configuration

Controlled nucleation of topological defects in the stripe domain patterns of Lateral multilayers with Perpendicular Magnetic Anisotropy: competition between magnetostatic, exchange and misfit interactions

Magnetic lateral multilayers have been fabricated on weak perpendicular magnetic anisotropy amorphous Nd-Co films in order to perform a systematic study on the conditions for controlled nucleation of topological defects within their magnetic stripe domain pattern. A lateral thickness modulation of period $w$ is defined on the nanostructured samples that, in turn, induces a lateral modulation of both magnetic stripe domain periods $\lambda$ and average in-plane magnetization component $M_{inplane}$. Depending on lateral multilayer period and in-plane applied field, thin and thick regions switch independently during in-plane magnetization reversal and domain walls are created within the in-plane magnetization configuration coupled to variable angle grain boundaries and disclinations within the magnetic stripe domain patterns. This process is mainly driven by the competition between rotatable anisotropy (that couples the magnetic stripe pattern to in-plane magnetization) and in-plane shape anisotropy induced by the periodic thickness modulation. However, as the structural period $w$ becomes comparable to magnetic stripe period $\lambda$, the nucleation of topological defects at the interfaces between thin and thick regions is hindered by a size effect and stripe domains in the different thickness regions become strongly coupled.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures, submitted to Physical Review

A critical appraisal of ATLAS9 and NextGen 5 model atmospheres

The fitting atmosphere parameters (Teff, g, and [Fe/H]) for over 300 stars in the Gunn & Striker and Jacoby et al. catalogs have been obtained relying on the Kurucz (1992) ATLAS9 and Hauschildt et al (1999) NextGen5 synthesis models. The output results are compared, and a critical appraisal of both theoretical codes is performed.Comment: 2 pages, 2 figures; proceedings of "New Quests in Stellar Astrophysics: The link between Stars and Cosmology", 26-30 March, 2001, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, eds. M. Chavez, A. Bressan, A. Buzzoni & D. Mayya, to be published by the Kluwer Academic Publisher

Observation of a tricritical wedge filling transition in the 3D Ising model

In this Letter we present evidences of the occurrence of a tricritical filling transition for an Ising model in a linear wedge. We perform Monte Carlo simulations in a double wedge where antisymmetric fields act at the top and bottom wedges, decorated with specific field acting only along the wegde axes. A finite-size scaling analysis of these simulations shows a novel critical phenomenon, which is distinct from the critical filling. We adapt to tricritical filling the phenomenological theory which successfully was applied to the finite-size analysis of the critical filling in this geometry, observing good agreement between the simulations and the theoretical predictions for tricritical filling.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Low polarized emission from the core of coronal mass ejections

In white-light coronagraph images, cool prominence material is sometimes observed as bright patches in the core of coronal mass ejections (CMEs). If, as generally assumed, this emission is caused by Thomson-scattered light from the solar surface, it should be strongly polarised tangentially to the solar limb. However, the observations of a CME made with the SECCHI/STEREO coronagraphs on 31 August 2007 show that the emission from these bright core patches is exceptionally low polarised. We used the polarisation ratio method of Moran and Davila (2004) to localise the barycentre of the CME cloud. By analysing the data from both STEREO spacecraft we could resolve the plane-of-the-sky ambiguity this method usually suffers from. Stereoscopic triangulation was used to independently localise the low-polarisation patch relative to the cloud. We demonstrated for the first time that the bright core material is located close to the centre of the CME cloud. We show that the major part of the CME core emission, more than 85% in our case, is H$\alpha$ radiation and only a small fraction is Thomson-scattered light. Recent calculations also imply that the plasma density in the patch is 8 10$^8$ cm$^{-3}$ or more compared to 2.6 10$^6$ cm$^{-3}$ for the Thomson-scattering CME environment surrounding the core material.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure