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The Spatial Resolution Limit for an Individual Domain Wall in Magnetic Nanowires
journal contribution
posted on 2017-08-16, 00:00 authored by Sumit Dutta, Saima A. Siddiqui, Jean Anne Currivan-Incorvia, Caroline A. Ross, Marc A. BaldoMagnetic
nanowires are the foundation of several promising nonvolatile
computing devices, most notably magnetic racetrack memory and domain
wall logic. Here, we determine the analog information capacity in
these technologies, analyzing a magnetic nanowire containing a single
domain wall. Although wires can be deliberately patterned with notches
to define discrete positions for domain walls, the line edge roughness
of the wire can also trap domain walls at dimensions below the resolution
of the fabrication process, determining the fundamental resolution
limit for the placement of a domain wall. Using a fractal model for
the edge roughness, we show theoretically and experimentally that
the analog information capacity for wires is limited by the self-affine
statistics of the wire edge roughness, a relevant result for domain
wall devices scaled to regimes where edge roughness dominates the
energy landscape in which the walls move.