DEPARTMENT OF SOLID STATE SCIENCES

DYNAMAT GROUP

MUMAX3-WORKSHOP
SESSION 1
Dr. Jonathan Leliaert,
Dr. Jeroen Mulkers
THE DYNAMAT TEAM
Research group of the department of solid-state sciences at Ghent University

Workshop instructors

Dr. Jonathan Leliaert Dr. Jeroen Mulkers Prof. Dr. Bartel Drs. Pieter Gypens
Van Waeyenberge

[Link] 2
WORKSHOP SCHEDULE

Monday 08/31, 6PM-8PM CET

Session 1: general introduction to micromagnetics in mumax3
Session 2: mumax3 ecosystem, workflow and a first simulation

Monday 09/07, 6PM-7:30PM CET

Session 3: basic examples

Homework

Monday 09/14, 6PM-7:30PM CET

Session 4: advanced features and more extensive examples

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SESSION 1: GENERAL INTRODUCTION

Part 1: Micromagnetics recap Part 2: Design of mumax3

• Magnetization field • Mumax3 in a nutshell
• Magnetic energy • Scripting language
• Magnetization dynamics • Discretization
• Energy minimization • Shapes, geometry, regions
• Material parameters
• Initial magnetization
• Output
• Run/Relax/Minimize
• Effective field terms
• Spin transfer torques

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MICROMAGNETISM
In ferromagnets, neighboring magnetic moments have the tendency to align

Continuum
approx.
Quasi-uniform state

Magnetization can be described by a continuous vector field

central quantity of interest Vortex

• picosecond time scale

• 1nm – 1µm length scale

Néel Skyrmion

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MICROMAGNETISM

The physics is fully described by the total magnetic energy functional:

Crystal anisotropy
Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya
Exchange Zeeman Magneto-elasticity
Higher-order exchange
…

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MICROMAGNETISM
Two main objectives

Time integration Energy minimization

dynamics statics

- Spin waves - Stable magnetic states

- Domain wall motion - Hysteresis curves
- Spin transfer torques - Phase diagrams
- Vortex excitation - Domain wall profiles
- …. - …

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MICROMAGNETISM Time integration
dynamics

The magnetization dynamics is described by the Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert (LLG) equation

𝛾 1 𝛿𝐸
𝒎̇ = − 𝒎×𝑯 +𝛼𝒎 × 𝒎×𝑯 with 𝑯 =−
1+𝛼 𝜇 𝑀 𝛿𝒎

precession damping

Computation of the magnetization dynamics:

LLG
𝐸 𝒎, 𝑡 → 𝐻 𝒓 𝒎(𝒓, 𝑡)

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MICROMAGNETISM Time integration
dynamics

LLG adaptation 1
Spin transfer torques (Zhang-Li[1], Slonczewski[2,3] )
𝛾
𝒎̇ = − 𝒎×𝑯 +𝛼𝒎 × 𝒎×𝑯 +𝜏
1+𝛼

LLG adaptation 2
Additional random effective field term which scales with the temperature[4]

𝑯 → 𝑯 +𝑯 𝑯 (𝒓, 𝑡) = 0
2𝑘 𝑇𝛼
𝑯 (𝒓, 𝑡), 𝑯 (𝒓 , 𝑡′) = 𝛿 𝒓 − 𝒓 𝛿(𝑡 − 𝑡 )
𝑀𝛾

[1] Physical Review Letters 93(12), 127204 (2004). [3] Physical Review B 70(17), 172405 (2004).
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[2] Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials 159(1-2), L1–L7 (1996). [4] Journal of Applied Physics 112(2), (2012).
MICROMAGNETISM
Energy minimization
statics

Two approaches to minimize the free energy functional numerically:

1. Standard minimization scheme (e.g. steepest gradient)

2. LLG equation with strong damping (=removing the precession term)

𝒎̇ = −𝒎 × 𝒎 × 𝑯

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WHAT IS MUMAX3?
• Free finite-difference based micromagnetic simulation package
• GPU-accelerated nvidia GPU required
• Developed at DyNaMat (Ugent) by Arne Vansteenkiste
• Latest official release mumax3.10 (Aug 13, 2020)
• Active community [Link]/forum/#!forum/mumax2
• Documented API [Link]
• Open source (GPLv3) [Link]/mumax/3
• Mainly written in Go
• CUDA C kernels for heavy lifting
• Scripting language + Web GUI
• Well tested (unit tests + NIST standard problems)

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SCRIPTING LANGUAGE
Mumax3’s scripting language is a subset of golang

// saturation magnetization
Msat = 5e6

// declare new variable

Freq := 1e9

for i:=0; i<10; i++ {

print(i)
}

if 1+8 == 9 {
print(“Of course 1+8=9”)
}

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DISCRETIZATION

• Rectangular simulation box (origin in the center)

• Single regular rectangular grid
• Uniform magnetization inside cell 𝒎 = 𝒎(𝑥 , 𝑦 , 𝑧 )
• Cell size < exchange length

setgridsize(256,64,1)
setcellsize(1e-9,1e-9,1e-9)

• PBC values are number of virtual repetitions of the

simulation box used to calculate dipolar interactions
setpbc(4,0,0)

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DISCRETIZATION
The cuda fft library (used for the computation of the demag field) is
highly optimized for grid size dimensions with small prime factors.

Tip: try to use grid size dimensions which are ‘7-smooth’

Example of good and bad grid size dimensions:

190 = 2 ⋅ 5 ⋅ 19 191 = 191 192 = 2 ⋅ 3

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SHAPES
• A shape can be considered as a function 𝑓: ℝ → 𝑡𝑟𝑢𝑒, 𝑓𝑎𝑙𝑠𝑒 where
𝑡𝑟𝑢𝑒 if (𝑥, 𝑦, 𝑧) in shape
𝑓 𝑥, 𝑦, 𝑧 =
𝑓𝑎𝑙𝑠𝑒 otherwise

• Most shapes do not depend on the grid

• Default location: center of universe (0,0,0)
• Large set of predefined basic shapes
• Define new shapes by combining and modifying the basic shapes
• Shapes are useful for different tasks:
 The geometry
 Defining regions
 To set locally an initial magnetization

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SHAPES
Shapes Shape methods // Rotated cheese example

Cell(j,k,l) d := 200e-9
Circle(diameter) Transl(dx,dy,dz) sq := square(d)
Cone(diameter,height) Scale(sx,sy,sz)
Cuboid(Lx,Ly,Lz) RotX(angle) h := 50e-9
Cylinder(diameter,height) RotY(angle) hole := cylinder(h, h)
Ellipse(a,b) RotZ(angle) hole1 := [Link](100e-9, 0, 0)
Ellipsoid(a,b,c) Repeat(dx,dy,dz) hole2 := [Link](0, -50e-9, 0)
ImageShape(filename)
Layer(i) Add(shape) cheese := [Link](hole1).sub(hole2)
Layers(i1,i2) Sub(shape) cheese = [Link](pi/6)
Rect(Lx,Ly) Inverse()
Square(L) Intersect(shape)
Xrange(xmin,xmax) Xor(shape)
Yrange(ymin,ymax)
Zrange(zmin,zmax)

rotated cheese
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GEOMETRY
Optionally a magnet Shape other than the full simulation box can be specified

// Ring geometry example

setGridsize(100, 100, 10)

setCellsize(1e-9,1e-9,1e-9)

ring := circle(100e-9).sub(circle(50e-9))

setgeom(ring)

save(geom)

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REGIONS
• 256 regions in total (index 0→ 255)
• Each cell is assigned to a single region (default region id is 0)
• Each region has its own set of material parameters
• Two ways to set the region id in cells:
1. Set region id of a single cell
2. Set region id of all cells in a shape

SetGridSize(32,32,1)
SetCellSize(1,1,1)

// Set region id of cells in a circle to 1

DefRegion(1, circle(30))

// Set region id of cell (10,10,0) to 2

DefRegionCell(2, 10, 10, 0)

Save(regions)
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MATERIAL PARAMETERS
‒ Material parameters are assigned to the 256 regions.
‒ Material parameters can be functions of time
‒ There are vector and scalar material parameters
‒ Material parameters are predefined, they can not be created

// Assigning to a material parameter sets a value in all regions:

Msat = 800e3
AnisU = vector(1, 0, 0)

// When regions are defined, they can also be set region-wise:

[Link](0, 800e3)
[Link](1, 540e3)

// Material parameters can be functions of time as well:

f := 500e6
Ku1 = 500 * sin(2*pi*f*t)

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MATERIAL PARAMETERS: EXCITATIONS
‒ An excitation is a regional material parameter
‒ Additionally, one can add an arbitrary number of time- and space-dependent
vector fields of the form :
𝑔 𝑥 ,𝑦 ,𝑧 ∗𝑓 𝑡

B_ext = vector(0,0,1)

B_ext.Add(LoadFile("[Link]"), sin(2*pi*f*t))

B_ext.removeExtraTerms()

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INITIAL MAGNETIZATION
Different ways to set the magnetization:

m = config
[Link](filename)
[Link](regionId, config)
[Link](shape, config)
[Link](j,k,l, vector)

Here, a ‘config’ is an object which represents a magnetization configuration

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INITIAL MAGNETIZATION
Config Config methods m = uniform(1,1,0) m=Vortex(1,-1).Add(0.1,randomMag())

Uniform(mx, my, mz)

RandomMag()
RandomMagSeed(seed)
TwoDomain( Transl(dx,dy,dz)
mx1, my1, mz1, Scale(sx,sy,sz) M = BlochSkyrmion(1, 1) m=Vortex(1,-1).transl(100e-9,50e-9,0)
my2, my2, mz2, Add(ratio, config)
mx3, my3, mz3) RotZ(angle)
Vortex(circ, pol)
AntiVortex(circ, pol)
VortexWall(mxLeft, mxRight, circ, pol)
NeelSkyrmion(charge, pol)
BlochSkyrmion(charge, pol) m = uniform(1, 1, 1)
Conical(kVec, coneDir, coneAngle) [Link](cylinder(400e-9,100e-9), vortex(1,-1))
Helical(kVec)

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OUTPUT
3 output media:

• log file for input, logging and printing

• [Link] ( t, mx, my, mz, … )

tableadd(E_total)
tableaddvar(myVar,”myVar”,”unit”)
tablesave() // write single line
tableautosave(1e-12) // write periodically

• .ovf files for scalar and vector fields

save(Edens_total)
saveas(Edens_total,”[Link]”)
autosave(Edens_total, 1e-10) // write perdiodically

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RUN/RELAX/MINIMIZE
• Solving the LLG equation (time integration) // WARNING: ADVANCED SETTINGS
// In most cases, these settings can be ignored
run(timeperiod)
steps(100) // Set the solver:
// 1:Euler, 2:Heun, 3:Bogaki-Shampine, 4: Runge-Kutta(RK45),
runWhile(condition)
// 5:Dormand-Prince(the default), 6:Fehlberg, -1:Backward Euler
SetSolver(5)

// set timestep
fixdt = 0 // if 0 (default): use adaptive timestep
• Minimizing the energy
// Advanced settings for adaptive timestep (default values are given)
relax() // LLG without precession Headroom = 0.8 // headroom dt correction
Minimize() // steepest descent[1] MaxDt = 0 // if 0, no maximal timestep
MinDt = 0 // if 0, no minimal timestep
MaxErr = 1e-5 // maximum allowed error/step

// Advanced settings for minimizer (default values are given)

MinimizerSamples = 10 //Number of max dM for convergence check
MinimizerStop = 1e-6 //Stopping max dM for Minimize

[1] JOURNAL OF APPLIED PHYSICS115, 17D118 (2014) 24

THE INTERACTIONS

Effective field terms Spin transfer torques

• Demagnetization • Zhang-Li STT
• Exchange • Slonczewski STT
• Anisotropy
• Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya
• External field
• Thermal field
• Custom field

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 DEMAGNETIZATION FIELD TERM
Regional Material Parameters
Demagnetization energy density
Msat Saturation magnetization (A/m)

𝜇 NoDemagSpins Disable magnetostatic interaction per region

𝜀= − 𝑀 𝒎⋅𝑯 (default=0, set to 1 to disable).
2
Output Quantities
B_demag Magnetostatic field (T)

Edens_demag Magnetostatic energy density (J/m3)

E_demag Magnetostatic energy (J)

Other functionalities
EnableDemag Enables/disables demag (default=true)

SetPBC Sets the number of repetitions in X,Y,Z to create periodic

boundary conditions. The number of repetitions
determines the cutoff range for the demagnetization.
DemagAccuracy Controls accuracy of demag kernel

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EXCHANGE FIELD TERM

Regional Material Parameters

Exchange energy density
Aex Exchange stiffness (J/m)

Msat Saturation magnetization (A/m)

𝜀 = A ∇𝒎
Output Quantities
Harmonic mean for inter-region
B_exch Exchange field (T)
exchange coupling (default behavior)
Edens_exch Total exchange energy density (including DMI) (J/m3)

𝐴 𝐴 E_exch Total exchange energy (including DMI) (J)

𝐴 𝑀 𝑀 MaxAngle Maximum angle between exchanged coupled spins
=2 (rad)
𝑀 𝐴 𝐴
𝑀 + 𝑀
Other functionalities
1 1 1 2 2 2 Ext_InterExchange Sets exchange coupling between two regions

Ext_ScaleExchange Re-scales exchange coupling between two regions

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ANISOTROPY FIELD TERM

Uniaxial anisotropy energy density Regional Material Parameters

anisU Uniaxial anisotropy direction
𝜀 =−𝐾 𝑢⋅𝒎 −𝐾 𝑢⋅𝒎 Ku1, Ku2 Uniaxial anisotropy constants (J/m3)

AnisC1, AnisC2 Cubic anisotropy directions

Kc1, Kc2, Kc3 Cubic anisotropy constants (J/m3)

Similar expression for cubic Msat Saturation magnetization (A/m)
anisotropy energy density [1]
Output Quantities
B_anis Anisotropy field (T)

Edens_anis Total anisotropy energy density (including DMI) (J/m3)

E_anis Total anisotropy energy (including DMI) (J)

[1] "The design and verification of mumax3", AIP Advances 4, 107133 (2014). 28
DZYALOSHINSKII-MORIYA FIELD TERM

Interfacially-induced DMI energy density

Regional Material Parameters
Dind Interfacially-induced DMI strength (J/m2)

𝜀 = 𝐷 [𝑚 ∇ ⋅ 𝒎 − 𝒎 ⋅ ∇ 𝑚 ] Dbulk Bulk DMI strength (J/m2)

Msat Saturation magnetization (A/m)

Bulk DMI energy density

Output Quantities
B_exch Exchange field (including DMI) (T)
𝜀 = 𝐷 𝒎 ⋅ (∇ × 𝒎)
Edens_exch Total exchange energy density (including DMI) (J/m3)

E_exch Total exchange energy (including DMI) (J)

Note:
Other functionalities
Only single DMI type allowed at once Ext_InterDind Sets Dind coupling between two regions

Ext_ScaleDind Re-scales Dind coupling between two regions

OpenBC Use open boundary conditions (default=false, use

Neumann BC). This setting is only relevant for DMI.

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EXTERNAL FIELD TERM

Zeeman energy density Regional Material Parameters

Msat Saturation magnetization (A/m)
𝜀 = −𝑀 𝒎 ⋅ 𝑩 Excitation
B_ext Externally applied field(T)

Output Quantities
B_ext Externally applied field(T)

Edens_zeeman Zeeman energy density (J/m3)

E_zeeman Zeeman energy (J)

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 THERMAL FIELD TERM

Regional Material Parameters

Temp Temperature (K)

alpha Damping parameter

𝑯 (𝒓, 𝑡) = 0
Msat Saturation magnetization (A/m)

Output Quantities
𝑯 (𝒓, 𝑡), 𝑯 (𝒓 , 𝑡′)
B_therm Thermal field (T)
2𝑘 𝑇𝛼 Edens_therm Thermal energy density (J/m3)
= 𝛿 𝒓 − 𝒓 𝛿(𝑡 − 𝑡 )
𝑀𝛾 E_therm Thermal energy (J)

Other functionalities
ThermSeed Sets random seed for thermal noise

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CUSTOM FIELD TERMS

Output Quantities
B_custom User-defined field (T)

Edens_custom Total energy density of user-defined field (J/m3)

E_custom Total energy of user-defined field (J)

Other functionalities
AddEdensTerm Add a custom energy density term

AddFieldTerm Add a custom effective field term

RemoveCustomFields Remove all custom fields

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 ZHANG-LI STT
Regional Material Parameters
Zhang-Li spin-transfer torque
Pol Electrical current polarization

1 + 𝜉𝛼 xi Non-adiabaticity of spin-transfer-torque
𝝉= 𝒎× 𝒎× 𝒖⋅∇ 𝐦
1+𝛼 alpha Damping parameter
𝜉−𝛼 Msat Saturation magnetization (A/m)
+ 𝒎× 𝒖⋅∇ 𝒎
1+𝛼 Excitation
J Electrical current density (A/m2)
with
𝜇 𝑃 Output Quantities
𝒖= 𝒋
2𝑒𝛾 𝑀 (1 + 𝜉 ) STTorque Spin-transfer torque/γ0 (T)

Other functionalities
DisableZhangLiTorque Disable Zhang-Li torque (default=false)

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 SLONCZEWSKI STT
Regional Material Parameters
Slonczewski spin-transfer torque Pol Electrical current polarization

Lambda Slonczewski Λ parameter

𝜖 + 𝛼𝜖′
𝝉=𝛽 𝒎× 𝒎 ×𝐦 EpsilonPrime Slonczewski secondairy STT term ε'
1+𝛼
alpha Damping parameter
𝜖′ − 𝛼𝜖
−𝛽 𝒎×𝒎 Msat Saturation magnetization (A/m)
1+𝛼
FreeLayerThickness Slonczewski free layer thickness (if set to zero (default),
with then the thickness will be deduced from the mesh size) (m)
Excitation
𝑗ℏ
𝛽= J Electrical current density (A/m2)
𝑀 𝑒𝑑
𝑃Λ FixedLayer Slonczewski fixed layer polarization
𝜖=
Λ + 1 + (Λ − 1)(𝒎 ⋅ 𝒎 )
Output Quantities
STTorque Spin-transfer torque/γ0 (T)

Other functionalities
DisableSlonczewskiTorque Disables Slonczewski torque (default=false)
FixedLayerPosition Position of the fixed layer: FIXEDLAYER_TOP,
FIXEDLAYER_BOTTOM (default=FIXEDLAYER_TOP) 34
[Link]

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