Resonant Switching of Two Dipole-Coupled Nanomagnets

The storage layer of recently developed spin-flop magnetic random-access memory consists of two closely spaced dipole-coupled nanomagnets and is highly stable in the ground state as well as in quasistatic fields applied off the easy axis. We show experimentally and confirm by using micromagnetic simulations that these spin-flop bilayers can be switched relatively easily by dynamic fields, applied at the frequency of the optical spin resonance of the bilayer. The field amplitude sufficient for this resonant switching can be an order of magnitude lower than the fields necessary for quasistatic reversal. Our data and micromagnetic analysis suggest that thermal agitation can play a role in the observed resonant switching behavior.