The need to measure the displacement distance of domain walls from equilibrium for very weak alternating fields (H ≪ coercive force) in bulk magnetic material has prompted a study of the possible use of the opening of the Rayleigh hysteresis loop to indicate the amount of wall displacement. This paper contains (1) a review of the theoretical relationship between hysteresis shape and the displacement distance of a domain wall, based upon defect-energy models of Rodbell and Bean, and Baldwin; and (2) an experimental approach which provides a measure of the wall displacements versus hysteresis shape for 50% Ni–Fe tape. Discrepancies between the theoretical and measured relationships are noted. In addition, an application is described in which the measured relationship between hysteresis and wall displacement is used to obtain the size of residual domains in 50% nickel-iron.
(c) 1970 American Institue of Physics. This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the American Institute of Physics. The following article appeared in Journal of Applied Physics and may be found at http://link.aip.org/link/?JAPIAU/41/1159/1;