  The nucleation of reversed magnetic domains in Pt/Co/AlO$_{x}$
microstructures with perpendicular anisotropy was studied experimentally in the
presence of an in-plane magnetic field. For large enough in-plane field,
nucleation was observed preferentially at an edge of the sample normal to this
field. The position at which nucleation takes place was observed to depend in a
chiral way on the initial magnetization and applied field directions. An
explanation of these results is proposed, based on the existence of a sizable
Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction in this sample. Another consequence of this
interaction is that the energy of domain walls can become negative for in-plane
fields smaller than the effective anisotropy field.
