Transverse magneto-optical Kerr effect at the 2p threshold of 3d magnets

Abstract

The transverse magneto-optical Kerr effect (T-MOKE) was investigated for thin epitaxial films of Fe grown on Ag(100) in the region of the 2p excitation threshold. The experimental reflectivity and asymmetry spectra are compared to those derived from the complex dielectric function tensor. The T-MOKE asymmetry is a mixture of both the real and imaginary parts of the off-diagonal elements of the dielectric function tensor, depending sensitively on the relative magnitudes between the real and imaginary parts of the diagonal elements. We demonstrate the possibility to determine the exchange coupling between a ferromagnetic thin film and an adsorbed monolayer by T-MOKE.