Non-uniform thermal magnetization noise in thin films: application to GMR heads

A general scheme is developed to analyze the effect of non-uniform thermal magnetization fluctuations in a thin film. The normal mode formalism is utilized to calculate random magnetization fluctuations. The magnetization noise is proportional to the temperature and inversely proportional to the film volume. The total noise power is the sum of normal mode spectral noises and mainly determined by spin-wave standing modes with an odd number of oscillations. The effect rapidly decreases with increasing mode number. An exact analytical calcutaion is presented for a two-cell model.