Universal Pinning Energy Barrier for Driven Domain Walls in Thin Ferromagnetic Films

Phys Rev Lett. 2016 Jul 29;117(5):057201. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.057201. Epub 2016 Jul 29.

Abstract

We report a comparative study of magnetic field driven domain wall motion in thin films made of different magnetic materials for a wide range of field and temperature. The full thermally activated creep motion, observed below the depinning threshold, is shown to be described by a unique universal energy barrier function. Our findings should be relevant for other systems whose dynamics can be modeled by elastic interfaces moving on disordered energy landscapes.