Magnetic normal modes of bicomponent permalloy/cobalt structures in the parallel and antiparallel ground state

Two-dimensional arrays of bicomponent structures made of cobalt and permalloy elliptical dots with thickness of 25 nm, length 1 μm, and width of 225 nm, have been prepared by a self-aligned shadow deposition technique. Brillouin light scattering has been exploited to study the frequency dependence of thermally excited magnetic eigenmodes on the intensity of the external magnetic field, applied along the easy axis of the elements. Several modes have been observed while sweeping the field along the major and minor hysteresis loops, encompassing both the parallel and the antiparallel alignment of the magnetization in adjacent permalloy and cobalt dots. Micromagnetic simulations based on the dynamic matrix method enabled us to successfully reproduce the measured evolution of the frequencies with the field, as well as to identify the spatial profiles of the modes. A marked difference in the field dependence of the frequency of some modes has been observed for parallel and antiparallel magnetization configurations, suggesting the possibility of tuning the dynamic response in a reprogrammable way. The role of both static and dynamic magnetic coupling in determining the mode frequency is discussed in detail by studying the frequency evolution as a function of the gap size between the dots. © 2014 American Physical Society.