Extracting the intrinsic switching field distribution in perpendicular media: a comparative analysis

Abstract

We introduce a new method based on the first-order-reversal-curve (FORC) diagram to extract the intrinsic (microscopic) switching-field distribution (SFD) of perpendicular recording media (PRM). To demonstrate the viability of the method, we micromagnetically simulated FORCs for PRM with known SFD and compare the extracted SFD with the SFD obtained by means of two different methods that are based on recoil loops, too, which however rely on mean-field approximations and assumptions on the shape of the SFD. The FORC method turns out to be the most accurate algorithm over a broad range of dipolar interaction strengths, where the other methods overestimate the width of the SFD.