Stacking faults in perpendicular media; the relationship to anisotropy dispersion

This paper investigates the effect of stacking faults in CoPt media using a simple model based on empirical characterization of micromagnetic calculations. The presence of stacking faults give rise to a reduction of the effective value of HK via the introduction of local fcc planes. The analysis shows that the statistical distribution of the fcc planes among the grains can give a significant contribution to the width of the effective HK dispersion.