Angular dependence of magnetization reversal process in exchange biased epitaxial MnPd/Fe bilayers

We investigated the angular dependence of magnetization reversal in epitaxial MnPd/Fe bilayers grown on MgO 001 using combined longitudinal and transverse magneto-optical Kerr effect. Square loops, asymmetrically shaped loops, and double-shifted loops were observed as the field orientation was varied from parallel to perpendicular to the bias direction. Additionally, including the effect of an induced uniaxial anisotropy in the ferromagnetic layers, an improved effective field model was used to interpret the complex angular dependence of the magnetic switching fields. The fitting shows good agreement with the experimental results for the samples with different thicknesses. © 2010 American Institute of Physics. doi:10.1063/1.3340449