Domain wall propagation in bistable amorphous wires

[EN] Magnetostrictive Fe-base amorphous wires spontaneously exhibit square-shaped hysteresis loops that is characterized by a single quite large Barkhausen jump when the switching magnetic field is reached. This jump is ascribed to the propagation of a wall along the wire. In this paper, deeper information is reported on the propagation characteristics in these wires as a function of the amplitude and the frequency of the magnetic field generating such propagation. In particular, the wall velocity and its length are experimentally determined and the results are analysed considering the quasi-planar shape model for the wall that has been introduced recently, whose validity is confirmed. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.