APL Materials (Mar 2017)

Temperature-dependent Faraday rotation and magnetization reorientation in cerium-substituted yttrium iron garnet thin films

  • Enno Lage,
  • Lukas Beran,
  • Andy Udo Quindeau,
  • Lukas Ohnoutek,
  • Miroslav Kucera,
  • Roman Antos,
  • Sohrab Redjai Sani,
  • Gerald F. Dionne,
  • Martin Veis,
  • Caroline A. Ross

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4976817
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 5, no. 3
pp. 036104 – 036104-7

Abstract

Read online

We report on the temperature dependence of the magnetic and magneto-optical properties in cerium-substituted yttrium iron garnet (Ce:YIG) thin films. Measurements of the Faraday rotation as a function of temperature show that the magnetic easy axis of thin Ce:YIG films reorients from in-plane to out-of-plane on cooling below −100 °C. We argue that the temperature-dependence of the magnetostriction and magnetocrystalline anisotropy of Ce:YIG is the dominant factor contributing to the change in easy axis direction, and we describe the changes in the magneto-optical spectra with temperature.