Domain effects in Faraday effect sensors based on iron garnets

Abstract

Domain-induced diffraction effects produced by two iron garnet thick films and two bulk crystals are compared. The thick films, characterized by a serpentine magnetic domain structure, produced nonlinear response functions; this is in qualitative agreement with a one-dimensional diffraction model. Bulk iron garnet crystals, which exhibited a complex three-dimensional domain structure, produced qualitatively similar effects that diminished with increasing crystal length. Differential signal processing resulted in a linear signal for the thick films and a primarily sinusoidal response for the bulk crystals.