Low energy domain patterns in soft ferromagnetic films

Abstract Computations based on a two-dimensional model recently proposed by the authors shed some new light on classical experimental observations of permalloy films under in-plane applied magnetic fields. Some quantities, such as the magnetic charge density or the magnetization in the regions of the film where the external field penetrates the sample are easily and robustly computable through energy minimization and are much less prone to hysteresis than the underlying domain structures.