Monitoring superparamagnetic Langevin behavior of individual SrRuO 3 nanostructures

Patterned nanostructures on the order of 200 nm × 200 nm of the itinerant ferromagnet SrRuO3 give rise to superparamagnetic behavior below the Curie temperature (∼150K) down to a sample-dependent blocking temperature. We monitor the superparamagnetic fluctuations of an individual volume and demonstrate that the field dependence of the time-averaged magnetization is well described by the Langevin equation. On the other hand, the rate of the fluctuations suggests that the volume in which the magnetization fluctuates is smaller by more than an order of magnitude. We suggest that switching via nucleation followed by propagation gives rise to Langevin behavior of the total volume, whereas the switching rate is determined by a much smaller nucleation volume.