  Although pinning of domain walls in ferromagnets is ubiquitous, the absence
of an appropriate characterization tool has limited the ability to correlate
the physical and magnetic microstructures of ferromagnetic films with specific
pinning mechanisms. Here, we show that the pinning of a magnetic vortex, the
simplest possible domain structure in soft ferromagnets, is strongly correlated
with surface roughness, and we make a quantitative comparison of the pinning
energy and spatial range in films of various thickness. The results demonstrate
that thickness fluctuations on the lateral length scale of the vortex core
diameter, i.e. an effective roughness at a specific length scale, provides the
dominant pinning mechanism. We argue that this mechanism will be important in
virtually any soft ferromagnetic film.
