Hysteresis of two interacting magnetic pairs with inequivalent perpendicular anisotropy

Abstract We consider a model for magnetic memory that consists of strongly coupled dipolar or antiferromagnetic (AF) pairs with inequivalent perpendicular anisotropy K 1 and K 2 . For appropriate parameter values, determined in this work, they have two inequivalent storage states with zero net magnetic moment. Both analytical and numerical calculations are performed, in some cases yielding different results because of relaxation effects (i.e., a dependence on the damping parameter α ). Hysteresis loops for a wide variety of parameter values are obtained, both for the AF case and the dipole case. An Appendix gives analytic results for slightly non-collinear spins in an applied field, which were used to test the numerical results.