The energy lost by the continuous pinning and depinning of the domain wall as it moves and the energy lost by the formation and destruction of a fraction of the wall surface may be the origin of the losses which find their expression in the hysteresis loop. This new hypothesis, based on Globus' model, allows to calculate the wall energy y and the pinning force ! .Experimentally, only a simple measurement of the loop areas is needful to calculate the y value, which is in very good agreement with theoretical values deduced from the theory of Landau and Lifshits. I n addition, the y values measured are proportional to the global anisotropy of polycrystals K (K = Kl + a,, As), that results in a very small wall thickness
Theoretical ConceptsI n addition t o the standard ideas, this paper is based on the following theoretical concepts : a ) a "grain boundary limited wall model" with the wall size changing while the wall moves inside a spherical grain [l to 31; b) in ferrimagnetic polycrystalline materials, the existence of a global anisotropy K which includes, in addition t o the magnetocrystalline anisotropy K,, a magnetoelastic term a,, where the natural stresses a, are specific t o the composition [ l , 2, 41. (These stresses would be related to the fact that in polycrystalline materials the well-known strain occurring at the Curie temperature cannot exist in a grain because of the different crystallographic orientation of the neighbouring grains).The experimental data used to reach these concepts are the following: