Reduction of demagnetizing effects under nonuniform hard-axis drive in uniaxial thin films

When subject to a nonuniform transverse field, a thin magnetic film may exhibit an effective anisotropy field of several times Hk. It is shown that both using a keeper film and making the elements narrow in their easy-axis direction lowers the demagnetizing fields. A method is explained to compute the magnetization distribution with or without keeper for film elements of finite width. Numerical results for typical memory elements are given.