Dresden 2009 – wissenschaftliches Programm

Bereiche | Tage | Auswahl | Suche | Downloads | Hilfe

O: Fachverband Oberflächenphysik

O 32: Surface or interface magnetism

O 32.1: Vortrag

Mittwoch, 25. März 2009, 10:30–10:45, SCH A315

Surface Plasmon Excitation on Magnetoactive Materials — Luca Sapienza and •Dominic Zerulla — University College Dublin, School of Physics, Dublin 4, Ireland.

The interaction of surface plasmons - fluctuations in the electron density at the interface between media with dielectric constants of opposite sign - with magnetically ordered systems has attracted a lot of interest in the last ten years, as a result of the possibility of enhancing magneto-optical properties, like the Faraday and Kerr effect. More recently, research has been focused on the merging of the areas of spintronics and plasmonics, developing of a new field, called spin-plasmonics.
Here, we will present a systematic study of the excitation of surface plasmons on ferromagnetic materials in multilayered structures composed of thin films of nickel, iron, cobalt, capped by a silver layer [1]. The electromagnetic properties of the systems are theoretically and experimentally investigated as a function of the metal layers’ thickness and the critical parameters in this study of the interaction between surface plasmon waves and the magneto-active material are discussed. Finally, an optimized structure for the investigations of spin-plasmonic effects in thin films is proposed.
[1] L. Sapienza, D. Zerulla, “Surface Plasmon Excitation on Magnetoactive Materials", Phys. Rev. B (accepted Nov. 2008)