By Aurelio Hierro from Univ. of Glasgow

Traditionally, magnetism has been closely linked to the imaging and analysis of magnetic domains within ferromagnets as their behavior is critical to understand the properties of the magnetic systems. Nowadays, with the increased complexity of the magnetic textures to be used in Spintronics and at the beginning of the novel field of 3D Nanomagnetism, magnetic imaging techniques face the challenge of moving from the characterization of magnetization configurations in planar systems, to the study of complex 3D magnetic textures within heterostructures and 3D nanomagnets. In this framework, Magnetic X-ray Transmission Tomography is an excellent technique to address these challenges, as it is capable of probing and 3D reconstructing the magnetization configuration in arbitrary magnetic systems.

In this seminar, the capabilities and potential of Magnetic Soft X-ray Transmission Microscopy applied to the study of non-trivial magnetic textures will be presented. The studied magnetic systems are based on heterostructures with Perpendicular Magnetic Anisotropy materials as key elements. These systems are known to be natural playgrounds for magnetic topological defects and complex magnetic structures such as Bloch points, Merons and Vortex-Antivortex textures. The capabilities of the technique will be shown from conventional 2D imaging, to the novel 3D magnetic tomography. Finally, the latter will be demonstrated by showing the first experimental Soft X-ray Tomographic reconstruction (up to our knowledge) of a magnetic heterostructure which was carried out at the MISTRAL beamline of the ALBA Synchrotron.