Micromagnetic study of switching boundary of a spin torque nanodevice

We report on a numerical study of the micromagnetic switching process of a nanostructured spin torque device. We show that incoherent spin waves can be excited over a wide range of current and field even at zero temperature. These large amplitude, incoherent, and nonzero k spin wave modes are shown to alter the switching phase boundary from that calculated within a macrospin model. The presence of telegraphic transitions between different spin wave modes may also contribute to the so-called back-hopping phenomenon where the switching probability varies nonmonotonically with increasing bias current. (C) 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3561753]