Optical second-harmonic generation from magnetized surfaces

Abstract

We propose optical second-harmonic generation as a means to probe surface magnetization. It is shown that surface magnetization can induce a number of nonlinear susceptibility elements that would vanish otherwise. They are presented for the (001), (110), and (111) surfaces of a fcc centrosymmetric crystal. An order-of-magnitude estimate, using the microscopic expression of the nonlinear susceptibility, suggests that these induced elements are detectable by optical second-harmonic generation with appropriate polarization combinations. The second-harmonic signals from magnetized and nonmagnetized surfaces should exhibit characteristically different rotational anisotropy.