Unified understanding of both thermally assisted and precessional spin-transfer switching in perpendicularly magnetized giant magnetoresistive nanopillars

We report on the spin-transfer magnetization switching properties of CoFe/Pd-based perpendicularly magnetized giant magnetoresistive cells over a wide current pulse duration time range. Analytic expressions without empirical parameters like attempt frequency are tested experimentally for the thermally assisted and precessional regimes. Good agreement with the experiment data is obtained using a common parameter set in both regimes, which leads to a comprehensive understanding of the switching properties including the origin of the attempt frequency. (C) 2013 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4789879]