The author would like to acknowledge helpful discussions with Michael Donahue of the Math, Statistics and Computational Science department within the National Institute of Standards and Technology, to whom I am indebted for affording much assistance with the finer points of the Object Oriented Micromagnetic Framework.
Many fruitful conversations with Werner Scholz of Seagate Technologies, Inc. yielded further insight into the workings of magpar, for which I am most grateful.
I have had many indispensable meetings, e-mail and telephone conversations with Alexander Zhukov, Alexander Goncharov and Peter de Groot of the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Southampton, providing plots of experimental data and guidance with theory -- I am much obliged to you all.
My colleagues Jürgen Zimmermann and Giuliano Bordignon deserve many thanks for their industrious verification of the equations and derivations found in both the body of this thesis and the appendices.
My supervisor Hans Fangohr has provided thorough and dependable first-class supervision and assistance where necessary and I am extraordinarily appreciative of this.
I would like to thank my family for their tireless proof-reading of this work and their devoted support, and to them I dedicate this thesis.