Citation:
Phys. Rev. B (2011), vol. 83, n.21 (214403), pp. 1-13
ISSN:
1098-0121
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevB.83.214403
Sponsor:
This work is supported by SeCyT-UNCórdoba and CONICET, Argentina, Spanish MICINN (FIS2008-06249 and HP2008-0032) and Asturias FICYT (IB08-106), and Grants MOSAICO (Spain) and MODELICO-CM (Comunidad de Madrid, Spain). J. A. Capitán acknowledges funding by a contract from Comunidad de Madrid and Fondo Social Europeo. A.B. Kolton acknowledges ANPCYT (Grant No. PICT2007886, Argentina) and Universidad de Barcelona, Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (Spain), and Generalitat
de Catalunya for partial support through the I3 program.
Project:
Comunidad de Madrid. S2009/ESP-1691/MODELICO Gobierno de España. FIS2008-06249 Gobierno de España. HP2008-0032 Gobierno de España. FIS2006-01485/MOSAICO
The motion of a domain wall in a two-dimensional medium is studied by taking into account the internal elastic degrees of freedom of the wall and geometrical pinning produced by both holes and sample boundaries. This study is used to analyze the geometrical coThe motion of a domain wall in a two-dimensional medium is studied by taking into account the internal elastic degrees of freedom of the wall and geometrical pinning produced by both holes and sample boundaries. This study is used to analyze the geometrical conditions needed for optimizing crossed-ratchet effects in periodic rectangular arrays of asymmetric holes, recently observed experimentally in patterned ferromagnetic films. Exact calculation as a function of the geometry of the sample and numerical simulations have been used to obtain the anisotropic critical fields for depinning flat and kinked walls in rectangular arrays of triangles. The aim is to show with a generic elastic model for interfaces how to build a rectifier able to display crossed-ratchet effects or effective potential landscapes for controlling the motion of interfaces or invasion fronts.[+][-]