The Barkhausen effect

There is such a large production and analysis of experimental data about the Barkhausen noise that there is a serious risk of confusion and misunderstanding. This chapter reviews this large production of data, ideas and takes into account the important results previously appearing in the literature, to propose a single framework to interpret the phenomenon. Data have been collected on nearly all possible soft magnetic materials, and considering many different properties, so that one can, in principle, assume them as sufficiently exhaustive and reliable. The absence of a coherent interpretation could then be ascribed to the lack of a proper theoretical model.. It is particularly important to deal with recent observations of the Barkhausen noise lacking a coherent interpretation–– such as, for measurements in thin films, hard materials, and low-dimensional systems.