Enhanced Optical Magnetoelectric Effect in a Patterned Polar Ferrimagnet
- 26 April 2006
- journal article
- research article
- Published by American Physical Society (APS) in Physical Review Letters
- Vol. 96 (16), 167202
- https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.96.167202
Abstract
A simple method to dramatically enhance the optical magnetoelectric (ME) effect, i.e., nonreciprocal directional birefringence, is proposed and demonstrated for a polar ferrimagnet GaFeO3 as a typical example. We patterned a simple grating with a period of 4 microm on a surface of GaFeO3 crystal and used the diffracted light as a probe. The optical ME modulation signal for the Bragg spot of the order n=1 becomes gigantic in the photon energy 1-4 eV and reaches 1-2% of the bare diffracted light intensity in a magnetic field of 500 Oe. This is amplified by more than 3 orders of magnitude compared to that for the reflection of bulk GaFeO3. Fabricating a photonic crystal will make it possible to lead the way for the practical use of the optical ME effect.This publication has 18 references indexed in Scilit:
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