Study of the kinetics of domain structures in thin ferromagnetic films by the Wang-Landau method

The features of a phase transition between the strict striped domain structure in thin ferromagnetic films with transverse anisotropy and the so-called tetragonal phase, where domains can be twisted and broken into parts, have been analyzed. It has been shown that the phase transition should be thermodynamically treated as a Kosterlitz–Thouless transition, where ends of domains serve as vortices. It has been demonstrated with the Wang–Landau numerical algorithm that the kinetics of this phase transition is strongly slowed down owing to the existence of a large number of metastable states; in this property, the system is partially similar to spin glasses.