CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

We show that the mean field phase diagram of the dipolar frustrated ferromagnet in an external field presents an inverse transition in the field-temperature plane. The presence of this type of transition has recently been observed experimentally in ultrathin films of Fe/Cu(001). We study a coarse-grained model Hamiltonian in two dimensions. The model supports stripe and bubble equilibrium phases, as well as the paramagnetic phase. At variance with common expectations, already in a single mode approximation, the model shows a sequence of paramagnetic-bubbles-stripes-paramagnetic phase transitions upon lowering the temperature at fixed external field. Going beyond the single mode approximation leads to the shrinking of the bubbles phase, which is restricted to a small region near the zero field critical temperature. Monte Carlo simulations results with a Heisenberg model are consistent with the mean field results.