Simulating interactions in building blocks of perpendicular artificial magnetic systems

Artificial magnetic systems with customizable interactions between magnetic elements are useful for both technological and theoretical applications. To design new systems for modern applications, researchers must be able to understand and control the interactions between magnetic elements, both in stationary states and during switching processes. We are investigating perpendicular magnetic systems patterned from Pt/Co multilayer films, which are appealing because they can be studied optically. One way to control the interactions in such systems is by connecting neighboring features with thin necks. This could be used to engineer disorder into the system or introduce large scale symmetry breaking. We have used micromagnetic simulations to characterize the impact of adding connections between neighboring elements on the ground state and switching behavior of small groupings of magnetic elements. We verify that the behavior of multi-element groups can be straightforwardly generalized from the pairwise interactions. We use MOKE microscopy to study physically patterned samples to compare to these simulations.