Nucleation, imaging, and motion of magnetic domain walls in cylindrical nanowires

Abstract

We report several procedures for the robust nucleation of magnetic domain walls in cylindrical permalloy nanowires. Specific features of the magnetic force microscopy (MFM) contrast of such wires are discussed, to avoid the misinterpretation of the magnetization states. The domain walls moved under quasistatic magnetic fields in the range 0.1–10 mT, as evidenced by MFM at remanence at different stages of their motion.