One-dimensional domain walls in thin ferromagnetic films with fourfold anisotropy

Abstract

We study the properties of domain walls and domain patterns in ultrathin epitaxial magnetic films with two orthogonal in-plane easy axes, which we call fourfold materials. In these materials, the magnetization vector is constrained to lie entirely in the film plane and has four preferred directions dictated by the easy axes. We prove the existence of $90^\circ$ and $180^\circ$ domain walls in these materials as minimizers of a nonlocal one-dimensional energy functional. Further, we investigate numerically the role of the considered domain wall solutions for pattern formation in a rectangular sample.