There are two software packages underpinning the simulations performed for this work. The first is the Object Oriented MicroMagnetic Framework, or OOMMF (Donahue and Porter, 1999) provided by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. OOMMF employs the finite difference (FD) method which requires the discretisation (or segmentation, see section 2.7.1) of a chosen geometry over a grid of cells each of identical volume and cuboidal shape.
The second is magpar (Scholz, 2003, Scholz et al., 2003a), developed by Werner Scholz and the group of Prof. Fidler and Prof. Schrefl of the Technische Universität Wien. This software uses the hybrid finite element/boundary element method (FE/BE) and as such requires that the chosen geometry be discretised with tetrahedral volume elements which can be of variable volume and shape.
The aspect of these software packages which shifts the configuration of the magnetisation on a step-wise basis is an evolver, based on the Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert (LLG) differential equation (2.37).