Methods of Calculation of the Magneto-Optical Characteristics of Ferromagnetic Materials

Abstract

We have calculated the optical and magneto-optical properties of ferromagnetics in a wide spectral range hv = 1.24–5.15 eV, by applying theoretical models which were reported earlier in the literature. This allowed us to find a connection between the conductivity and the measured values of the complex Kerr angle Θ in order to establish the most proper technique for processing the experimental data. The behavior of the dispersion curves of diagonal and non-diagonal components of the tensor of optical conductivity depends on the choice of signs of the imaginary parts of a complex Kerr angle and a refractive index, which should be taken into account in the data analysis. The differences between dispersion dependences are insignificant in the region of energies higher than 4.5 eV. In this paper, the classical theory of free electrons in metals has been applied to give more details about the magneto-optical Kerr effect in ferromagnetic samples.