Domain-Wall Assisted Switching of Single-Domain Nanomagnets

This paper presents experimental and computational results demonstrating that the switching of single-domain permalloy nanomagnets can be assisted by the stray field of a passing transverse domain wall. We applied external magnetic fields with different magnitudes to show that nanomagnets switch for a certain field range only if the field of a domain wall and the externally applied field are superposed. We estimate that the stray field of the domain wall provides an extra 10 mT field in addition to the externally applied field. Micromagnetic simulations are in good agreement with experimental results, revealing that the strongly localized magnetic field of a propagating transverse wall is switching nearby dots. This effect can be exploited to generate clock fields for nanomagnet devices.