Domain structure of bulk ferromagnetic crystals in applied fields near saturation (Q413958)

The authors investigate the properties of the magnetization patterns in bulk uniaxial crystalline ferromagnets in the presence of an external magnetic field applied along the material's easy axis. They study the transition to non-trivial energy minimizers occurring near the saturation field in ferromagnetic plates with perpendicular easy axis. They get that in macroscopically large plates the transition from the monodomain to the multidomain magnetization pattern occurs when the strength \(H_{\mathrm{ext}} \) of the applied field satisfies \(H_s-H_{\mathrm{ext}} =O(L^{-2/3}) \), where \(H_s= 4\pi M_s\) is the saturation field and \(L\) is the plate thickness (up to a slow logarithmic dependence). Moreover they get that for smaller applied fields the excess energy of the minimizers per unit area in macroscopically large plates is \(\mathrm{Energy/Area} = O(L^{1/3})\) and linear with respect to \(H_{\mathrm{ext}} /H_s\) (up to a slow logarithmic dependence). They further investigate the asymptotic behavior of the energy in macroscopic samples. Under a physically reasonable assumption that the magnetization vector does not deviate strongly from the easy axis, they derive a reduced energy whose minimum agrees asymptotically with the sharp interface version of the energy. Furthermore, they get a formal asymptotic analysis of the reduced energy and establish a precise asymptotic behavior of the critical field \(H_{c_0}\) at which the only minimizer (global or local) is expected to be the uniform state, and the critical field \(H_{c_1}\) at which non-trivial minimizers emerge.