A micromagnetic model for the study of magnetoresistive devices

A technique for the solution of the micromagnetic equations of magnetic thin-film strips is described. The proposed micromagnetic model is capable of cost-effectively solving a mesh of 16000 points using an Amdahl VP1100 vector processing machine. The model can also be used satisfactorily on nonvector machines to obtain qualitative results at low resolution before the vector processor is employed. The model can be applied equally to single-strip or meander devices under constant, alternating, or gradient field conditions. Initial results show that domains can be implicitly included in the single-strip samples. The model is compared with experimental results of magnetization distributions obtained using a scanning laser microscope.<>