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Magneto-optical gradient effect imaging of magnetic textures
Molnár, Tomáš ; Hamrle, Jaroslav (oponent) ; Arregi Uribeetxebarria, Jon Ander (vedoucí práce)
Foundations of magneto-optics (MO), the field studying the influence of magnetic fields and magnetization on the propagation of light within matter, had been laid over a century and a half ago. Since then, MO has become one of the most widely used methods for magnetic imaging at the micro-scale. In addition to the MO Faraday and Kerr effects, which are linear in magnetization, effects quadratic in magnetization (Voigt or Cotton-Mouton effect) or dependent on magnetization-gradients (gradient effect) were later found. In particular, the MO gradient effect was the last to be discovered, but as it only decorated magnetic domain boundaries, it has not attracted so far the same interest as the Kerr effect for magnetic imaging. This work investigates the usefulness of the magneto-optical gradient effect to characterize nanoscale spin configurations, such as domain walls in perpendicularly magnetized materials. We present a novel experimental approach to reveal the properties of the MO gradient effect by exploiting its symmetries with respect to the polarization of light. Further, we analytically express the corresponding signal using an available theoretical model. By comparing simulated MO gradient effect signals obtained from the transfer matrix method and experimentally retrieved signals, we explore the possibility of characterizing the internal spin structure of nanoscale magnetic domain walls.
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