Surface instabilities and magnetic soft matter

We report on the formation of surface instabilities in a layer of thermoreversible ferrogel when exposed to a vertical magnetic field. Both static and time dependent magnetic fields are employed. Under variations of temperature, the viscoelastic properties of our soft magnetic matter can be tuned. Stress relaxation experiments unveil a stretched exponential scaling of the shear modulus, with an exponent of beta = 1/3. The resulting magnetic threshold for the formation of Rosensweig-cusps is measured for different temperatures, and compared with theoretical predictions by S. Bohlius, H. Pleiner and H. R. Brand, J.Phys.: Condens. Matter., 2006, 18, S2671-S2684.