Weak measurement of the magneto-optical spin Hall effect of light

Abstract

The spin Hall effect of light (SHEL) is a photonic version of the spin Hall effect in electronic systems and has been studied for more than 10 years. However, the lack of effective methods for dynamic modulation of spin-dependent splitting may hinder its applications. By introducing additional spin-orbit coupling of photons or nonreciprocal phase shift (NRPS), the magneto-optical Kerr effect may be one of the methods to alleviate the situation. Here, we experimentally reveal an enhanced and tunable SHEL in magneto-optical oxide thin films under the transverse magneto-optical Kerr effect configuration for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, which can be regarded as the magneto-optical SHEL (MOSHEL). We study the magneto-optical response of the multilayer structure and select the optimal structural parameters by the magneto-optical transfer matrix method. With a transverse magnetic field along opposite directions, an obvious SHEL shift difference of H-polarized light caused by NRPS is observed via a weak measurement method. With optimal parameters, the maximum measured shift difference of the SHEL achieves about 70 μm. The demonstrated MOSHEL phenomenon may accelerate the application of the SHEL in the field of spin photonics devices and precision metrology.