Coercivity of magnetic domain wall motion near the edge of a terrace

Domain wall motion near the edges of terraces (e.g., grooves, pits, plateaus, etc.) is studied using analytical techniques based on the minimum energy principle and computer simulations based on the dynamic Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert equation. One-dimensional lattices of magnetic dipoles with variations either of the easy axis direction (corresponding to a tilt of the anisotropy axis at the edge) or of the nearest-neighbor exchange force (corresponding to a changing film thickness) are considered. We show that the coercivity caused by the terrace edge could be as large as several kilo Oe.