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Magnetic frustration effects in artificial kagome arrays of nanomagnets with out-of-plane magnetization are investigated using magnetic force microscopy and Monte Carlo simulations. Experimental and theoretical results are compared to those found for the artificial kagome spin ice in which the nanomagnets have inplane magnetization. In contrast with what has been recently reported, we demonstrate that long-range (i.e., beyond nearest-neighbor) dipolar interactions between the nanomagnets cannot be neglected when describing the magnetic configurations observed after demagnetizing the arrays using a field protocol. As a consequence, there are clear limits to any universality in the behavior of these two artificial frustrated spin systems. We provide arguments to explain why these two systems show striking similarities at first sight in the development of pairwise spin correlations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Topological protection is an efficient way of warranting the integrity of quantum and nanosized systems. In magnetism, one example is the Bloch point, a peculiar three-dimensional object implying the local vanishing of magnetization within a ferromagnet. By combining surface and transmission x-ray magnetic circular dichroism photoemission electron microscopy, we experimentally confirm the existence of the simplest magnetization texture holding a Bloch point at rest: the Bloch-point domain wall in cylindrical magnetic nanowires. This opens the way to the experimental search for peculiar phenomena predicted during the motion of these protected Bloch-point-based domain walls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We have used time-resolved x-ray photoemission electron microscopy to investigate the magnetization dynamics induced by nanosecond current pulses in NiFe/Cu/Co nanostripes. A large tilt of the NiFe magnetization in the direction transverse to the stripe is observed during the pulses. We show that this effect cannot be quantitatively understood from the amplitude of the Oersted field and the shape anisotropy. High-frequency oscillations observed at the onset of the pulses are attributed to precessional motion of the NiFe magnetization about the effective field. We discuss the possible origins of the large magnetization tilt and the potential implications of the static and dynamic effects of the Oersted field on current-induced domain-wall motion in such stripes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shadow x-ray magnetic circular dichroism photoemission electron microscopy is a recent technique, in which the photon intensity in the shadow of an object lying on a surface may be used to gather information about the three-dimensional magnetization texture inside the object. Our purpose here is to lay the basis of a quantitative analysis of this technique. We first discuss the principle and implementation of a method to simulate the contrast expected from an arbitrary micromagnetic state. Textbook examples and successful comparison with experiments are then given. Instrumental settings are finally discussed, having an impact on the contrast and spatial resolution: photon energy, microscope extraction voltage and plane of focus, microscope background level, electric-field related distortion of three-dimensional objects, Fresnel diffraction, or photon scattering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We experimentally investigate magnetic frustration effects in thermally active artificial kagome spin ice. Starting from a paramagnetic state, the system is cooled down below the Curie temperature of the constituent material. The resulting magnetic configurations show that our arrays are locally brought into the so-called spin ice 2 phase, predicted by at-equilibrium Monte Carlo simulations and characterized by a magnetic charge crystal embedded in a disordered kagome spin lattice. However, by studying our arrays on a larger scale, we find the unambiguous signature of an out-of-equilibrium physics. Comparing our findings with numerical simulations, we interpret the efficiency of our thermalization procedure in terms of kinetic pathways that the system follows upon cooling and which drive the arrays into degenerate low-energy manifolds that are hardly accessible otherwise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High-aspect-ratio Fe nanostrips are studied with real-space micromagnetic imaging methods. We experimentally demonstrate reversible switching from essentially homogeneous single-domain states at room temperature to multidomain diamond states at elevated temperature. This temperature-dependent magnetic bistability can be understood and modeled by accounting for the temperature dependence of the magnetocrystalline, shape, and magnetoelastic anisotropies. These results show how the transition temperature between two magnetic domain states can be tailored by controlling epitaxial strain and particle geometry, which may generate new opportunities for magnetic memory and logic device design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]