Experimental demonstration and analysis of random field effects in ferromagnet/antiferromagnet bilayers

More than 30 years ago, Malozemoff (Phys. Rev. B 35, 3679 (1987)) hypothesized that exchange interaction at the interface between a ferromagnet (F) and an antiferromagnet (AF) can act as an effective random field, which can profoundly affect the magnetic properties of the system. However, until now this hypothesis has not been directly experimentally tested. We utilize magnetoelectronic measurements to analyze the effective exchange fields at Permalloy/CoO interface. Our results cannot be explained in terms of quasi-uniform effective exchange fields, but are in agreement with the random-field hypothesis of Malozemoff. The presented approach opens a new route for the quantitative analysis of effective exchange fields and anisotropies in magnetic heterostructures for memory, sensing and computing applications.