Influence of transverse fields on domain wall pinning in ferromagnetic nanostripes

Abstract

We report an experimental study dealing with the influence of in-plane transverse fields on the domain wall (DW) pinning in ferromagnetic nanostripes. We analyzed the pinning probability and depinning fields for several fabrication induced pinning sites. For all measurements reported here, the depinning field decreases with increasing transverse field independently from the actual domain wall type and the shape of the pinning site. The pinning probability decreases with increasing transverse fields for weak pinning sites. Stronger pinning sites can be active for large field ranges and show a complex dependence of the pinning probability on the applied transverse field. The occurrence of different domain wall types as well as the influence of a transverse field on the domain wall dynamics can explain this behavior.