Presents
Magnetic domain walls in nanowires
Monday, May 9, 2016
4:00 PM
F.W. Olin Hall Room 205
2190 E. Iliff Avenue
Refreshments at 3:45PM in the Olin Rotunda
Presented by
Dr. Karen Livesey
Assistant Professor
Department of Physics & Energy Science
University of Colorado,
Colorado Springs
Magnetic domain walls are nanometer-sized regions where magnetization reorients from
one aligned region to another. Many exciting spintronic applications utilize domain walls,
including logic schemes, data storage and lab-on-a-chip devices. I will detail an analytic
calculation that determines the domain wall structure in nanowires that are around 3nm
thick and 40-100nm wide. The analytic results match experiment and simulations extremely
well and allow predictions to be made for the best size to make nanowires for domain wall
applications. At the end of the talk, I will discuss how domain walls are altered by the
Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction. This asymmetric interaction is currently a hot topic in
magnetism research and produces surprising results.
Bio: Karen Livesey received BSc (2005) and PhD (2010) degrees from the University of Western Australia. After
postdoc work in Colorado and Australia, she joined the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs in 2012 as an
Assistant Professor in Physics. Her theoretical work covers many areas of magnetism including microwave
dynamics, nonlinear effects, thermodynamics, and nanoparticles in fluids. She referees for 11 journals, judges
IEEE Magnetics Society student awards, and teaches undergraduate and graduate students both in the classroom
and in research.
HOST: Dr. Barry Zink, (303) 871-3025, [email protected]