Magnetically defined domain isolation for studies of nucleation and growth coercivities

The re-entrant nature of the hysteresis loop in magneto-optical films makes the characteristics of the nucleation and pinning site distribution difficult to measure using conventional techniques. The paper introduces a new technique of magnetically isolating domains, allowing the measurement of coercivity distributions using a vibrating sample magnetometer without a patterned film. Results show that using this technique, the distribution of nucleation sites can be observed in growth dominated magnetic films.