Néel wall

A Néel wall is a narrow transition region between magnetic domains. In the Neel wall, the magnetisation rotates from the direction of the first domain to the direction of the second, with a rotation axis that is parallel to the wall plane. It consists of a core with fast varying rotation and two tails where the rotation logarithmically decays. Néel walls are the common magnetic domain wall type in very thin film where the exchange length is very large compared to the thickness. Néel walls would spread across the whole volume if it weren't for magnetic anisotropy.

Néel walls are named after the French physicist Louis Néel.

Another type of transition region is the Bloch wall were the magnetisation rotates along an axis that is perpendicular to the plane of the wall. Bloch walls are more common in thicker materials.

References

• 2-d stability of the Néel wall, Antonio DeSimone, Hans Knüpfer and Felix Otto in Calculus of Variations and Partial Differential Equations, 2006
• The Neel to Bloch domain wall phase transition in ferromagnetic strips