DOMAIN WALL MOTION IN BUBBLE DOMAIN MATERIALS

Abstract
Motion of magnetic domain walls in magnetic bubble domain materials is discussed in this paper. A steady‐state solution for wall velocity in a magnetic material with orthorhombic anisotropy is used to obtain the conventional expression for the domain wall mobility. After reviewing the experimental situation, it is concluded that the mobility depends in a predictable way on wall width but that its detailed behavior otherwise is not well understood. Limiting wall velocities, nonlinear velocity‐field behavior, and wall inertial effects are considered, and important consequences of the orthorhombic anisotropy appear here; supporting experimental results for these effects are reviewed. Wall motion damping due to anisotropic energy levels in several of the magnetic rare earths is shown to be a limiting factor in obtaining high mobility materials. Other factors which have been shown to be significant, such as surface smoothness, thermal annealing, and irradiation with X‐rays, are also discussed. Finally, expressions are developed which relate the data rate for bubble devices to magnetic material parameters. An upper limit of about 10 MHz is predicted for a typical epitaxial garnet film having 3 micron diameter bubbles, this limit depending inversely on the square of the bubble diameter.