Growth and characterization of 300-µm thick bi-substituted gadolinium Iron garnet films for an optical isolator

Abstract

A 300-µmm thick magnetooptic Bi-substituted gadolinium iron garnet film grown by liquid-phase epitaxy shows large magnetooptic figure of merit of 270 deg/dB at 1.3-µmm wavelength (Faraday rotation coefficient: - 1530 deg/cm, and optical absorption coefficient: 1.3 cm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">-1</sup> ) and is a promising material for a "vertical type" optical isolator at 1.3-µmm. At 0.8-µm the figure of merit of 23 deg/dB is obtained.