Theoretical study of magnetic domain walls through a cobalt nanocontact

To calculate the magnetic ground state of nanoparticles we present a self-consistent first-principles method in terms of a fully relativistic embedded cluster multiple scattering Green's function technique. Based on the derivatives of the band energy, a Newton-Raphson algorithm is used to find the ground-state configuration. The method is applied to a cobalt nanocontact that turned out to show a cycloidal domain wall configuration between oppositely magnetized leads. We found that a wall of cycloidal spin structure is about 30 meV lower in energy than the one of helical spin structure. A detailed analysis revealed that the uniaxial on-site anisotropy of the central atom is mainly responsible to this energy difference. This high uniaxial anisotropy energy is accompanied by a huge enhancement and anisotropy of the orbital magnetic moment of the central atom. By varying the magnetic orientation at the central atom, we identified the term related to exchange couplings (Weiss-field term), various on-site anisotropy terms, and also those due to higher order spin interactions.