Fast switching of bistable magnetic nanowires through collective spin reversal

The use of magnetic nanowires as memory units is made possible by the exponential divergence of the characteristic time for magnetization reversal at low temperature, but the slow relaxation makes the manipulation of the frozen magnetic states difficult. We suggest that finite-size segments can show a fast switching if collective reversal of the spins is taken into account. This mechanism gives rise at low temperatures to a scaling law for the dynamic susceptibility that has been experimentally observed for the dilute molecular chain Co(hfac)(2)NitPhOMe. These results suggest a possible way of engineering nanowires for fast switching of the magnetization. (C) 2005 American Institute of Physics.