No abstract available

[en] SmCo₅ thin films with a strong magnetic anisotropy are prepared epitaxially on Cr buffered MgO(110) and MgO(100) substrates either with a unique alignment of the c-axis throughout the film or with two perpendicular orientations of the easy axes in the film plane. For magnetic force microscopy (MFM) and magneto optical indicator film (MOIF)measurements, patterned elements were magnetized up to 4 T to adjust different remanent states and afterwards the domain structure was imaged. In the thermally demagnetized state magnetic contrast is visible on a length scale of 200 nm, which is about 4-5 times larger than the size of the individual grains. Thus, one has to describe the magnetic state by interaction domains originating from exchange or dipolar coupling of neighbouring grains. Upon applying an external field, the stray field contrast inside the element reduces and magnetic charges of opposite sign build up at the two edges of the squares perpendicular to the field direction. The domain structure resolved by MFM is compared with the quantitative stray field measurements obtained by MOIF