Regensburg 2022 – scientific programme
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MA: Fachverband Magnetismus
MA 5: Magnetic Instrumentation and Characterization
MA 5.1: Talk
Monday, September 5, 2022, 09:30–09:45, H48
Cubic magneto-optic Kerr effect in Ni(111) thin films with and without twinning — •Maik Gaerner1, Robin Silber2, Tobias Peters1, Jaroslav Hamrle3, and Timo Kuschel1 — 1Bielefeld University, Germany — 2IT4Innovations, VŠB - Technical University of Ostrava, Czech Republic — 3Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic
In most studies utilizing the magneto-optic Kerr effect (MOKE), the detected change of polarized light upon reflection from a magnetized sample is supposed to be proportional to the magnetization M. However, MOKE signatures quadratic in M have also been identified and utilized, e.g., to sense the structural order in Heusler compounds [1].
In our study, we employ the eight-directional method [2] to separate different MOKE contributions in Ni(111) thin films. We observe a strong anisotropic longitudinal MOKE contribution of third order in M which we attribute to a cubic magneto-optic tensor proportional to M3 [3]. We further show that the angular dependence of cubic MOKE (CMOKE) is affected by the amount of structural domain twinning (two structural (111) phases with 60∘ in-plane rotation) in the sample [3]. Our detailed study on CMOKE for two selected photon energies will open up new opportunities for CMOKE applications with sensitivity to twinning properties of thin films, e.g. CMOKE spectroscopy and microscopy or time-resolved CMOKE.
[1] R. Silber et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 116, 262401 (2020)
[2] K. Postava et al., J. Appl. Phys. 91, 7293 (2002)
[3] M. Gaerner et al., arXiv: 2205.08298 (2022)