Phenomenological theory of surface-induced interactions in magnetic nanostructures

Within discretized and continuous phenomenological models the equilibrium distribution of the induced uniaxial anisotropy in a ferromagnetic nanolayer can be calculated as function of the layer thickness. The theory explains experimentally observed nonlinear and nonmonotonic thickness dependencies of the total magnetic anisotropy in thin nanoscale ferromagnetic layers with out-of-plane magnetization.