Measurement and simulation of polarized neutron reflectivity and off-specular scattering from evolving magnetic domain structure in Co/Cu multilayers

We report on the measurement and simulation of the field-dependent polarized neutron reflectivity (specular) and scattering (off-specular) for an anti ferromagnetically coupled Co/Cu multilayer (NIL) with number of bilayers N = 40. The first-order Bragg peak is visible in the non-spin flip (NSF) channels representing the bilayer periodicity. We observe off-specular intensity around the AF Bragg peak at the half-order position in both SF and NSF channels. These Bragg sheets are most intense at lower fields and gradually disappearing at higher fields as the system attains saturation. We attribute the Bragg sheets to vertically correlated AF domains along the ML stack which get bigger in size with field strength. Those interpretations are confirmed by simulation of the data within the distorted wave born approximation (DWBA). (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.