Hysteresis of misaligned hard-soft grains

The demagnetization process in hard/soft multilayer systems has been investigated systematically within a self-contained micromagnetic model when a deviation angle β between the easy axis and the applied field exists. Hysteresis loops, spin distributions and energy products have been calculated with a finite hard layer thickness th. Both remanence and coercivity of the multilayer system decrease as β increases, leading to a significant decrease of the maximum energy product. A 30° deviation of the easy axis could result in a drop of the maximum energy product by more than 60%, which offers a possible explanation on the large discrepancy between the experimental and theoretical energy products. The effect of the finite hard layer thickness on the demagnetization process is important, which can only be ignored when th is large enough.