Lack of dependence between intrinsic magnetic damping and perpendicular magnetic anisotropy in Cu(tCu)/[Ni/Co]N multilayers

The correlation between magnetic damping and perpendicular magnetic anisotropy has been investigated in Cu(tCu)/[Ni/Co]N multilayers by time-resolved magneto-optical Kerr effect. The uniaxial magnetic anisotropy constant Ku is varied in the range of 3.0-3.6 Merg/cm3 by tuning either multilayer repetition number N or Cu thickness tCu. It is found that the PMA strength Ku increases with the increase of N, while the damping constant α0 keeps nearly a constant of 0.025, implying the intrinsic damping is independent of the Ku tuned by N. In contrast, as tCu increases from 2.5 to 20 nm, the α0 value rises continuously up to 0.040, in spite of the rather weak enhancement in Ku and its non-monotonic variation behavior. We consider the constant α0 with N is due to the unchanged spin-orbit coupling strength at each Co/Ni interface, while the obvious enhancement in α0 with tCu results mainly from the increased degree of spin disordering at the rougher Cu/Ni interface.