Energy dissipation of moved magnetic vortices

Faculty of Physics and CeNIDE, University of Duisburg-Essen - D-47048 Duisburg, Germany, EU

^(a) martin.magiera@uni-due.de

Received: 17 April 2013
Accepted: 28 August 2013

Abstract

A two-dimensional easy-plane ferromagnetic substrate, interacting with a dipolar tip which is magnetised perpendicularly with respect to the easy plane is studied numerically by solving the Landau-Lifshitz Gilbert equation. The dipolar tip stabilises a vortex structure which is dragged through the system and dissipates energy. An analytical expression for the friction force in the limit based on the Thiele equation is presented. The limitations of this result which predicts a diverging friction force in the thermodynamic limit, are demonstrated by a study of the size dependence of the friction force. While for small system sizes the dissipation depends logarithmically on the system size, it saturates at a specific velocity-dependent value. This size can be regarded as an effective vortex size and it is shown how this effective vortex size agrees with the infinite extension of a vortex in the thermodynamic limit. A magnetic friction number is defined which represents a general criterion for the validity of the Thiele equation and quantifies the degree of nonlinearity in the response of a driven spin configuration.