Structural Disorder and Collective Behavior of Two-Dimensional Magnetic Nanostructures.

Structural disorder has been shown to be responsible for profound changes of the interaction-energy landscapes and collective dynamics of two-dimensional (2D) magnetic nanostructures. Weakly-disordered 2D ensembles have a few particularly stable magnetic configurations with large basins of attraction from which the higher-energy metastable configurations are separated by only small downward barriers. In contrast, strongly-disordered ensembles have rough energy landscapes with a large number of low-energy local minima separated by relatively large energy barriers.