Surface/interface-roughness-induced demagnetizing effect in thin magnetic films

We study the influence of surface/interface roughness on the demagnetizing factor of a thin magnetic film with a single or a double boundary of self-affine, mound or anisotropic roughness. For a film with a single self-affine rough boundary, the in-plane demagnetizing factor Nxx(yy) is proportional to the interface width w square and to the leading order is inversely proportional to the lateral correlation length ξ. The roughness exponent α is also shown to greatly affect Nxx(yy). For a film with a single mound boundary, Nxx(yy) is inversely proportional to the apparent correlation length, and also depends on the ratio of the two different lateral lengths: the average mound separation λ and the randomness correlation length ζ. It is also shown that an anisotropic surface morphology can induce anisotropic in-plane demagnetizing factors. The demagnetizing anisotropy can be magnified by a morphological anisotropy. Furthermore, we consider films with two rough boundaries. Besides a general formalism derived for the demagnetizing factor, we investigate how the cross correlation of the two rough boundaries affects the in-plane demagnetizing factors. Connections between the demagnetizing factor and thin-film growth mechanisms are also discussed.