Soft x‐ray techniques to study mesoscale magnetism

Abstract

Cover Illustration. Different representations of magnetization (M) reversal in Co/Pt multilayers are shown on the cover. The plots are (red) a visible magneto-optic Kerr effect hysteresis loop showing the average, macroscopic M and (blue) a partially coherent x-ray scattering loop resulting from deviations from the average M at a fixed spatial frequency. The domains responsible for the scattering are seen directly in a sequence of x-ray zone-plate microscope images 4.5 microns across (right). The corresponding sequence of fully coherent x-ray scattering patterns (left) contains the same information as the images encoded in the speckled intensity distrubutions. (Unpublished domain images and speckle patterns from similar samples courtesy O. Hellwig, S. Kevan, and L. Sorensen.) 1