Energy minimizers for large ferromagnetic bodies (Q1314301)

In the theory of micromagnetics, the state of a rigid ferromagnetic body is described through its magnetization, a vector field defined over the body. Observed magnetizations are assumed to correspond to minimizers of an energy functional which depends on the applied magnetic field. Analytically this approach is too complex for application in cases of practical interest. The computations become more manageable if a ``no- exchange'' formulation of micromagnetics is adopted. In this paper, the author shows that the no-exchange formulation arises naturally as a limiting case of micromagnetics in the case of large bodies. There is an extensive discussion of the theoretical implications of this result.