Magneto-optical coupling in ferromagnetic thin films investigated by vector-magneto-optical generalized ellipsometry

We performed generalized Mueller matrix ellipsometry measurements in a magnetic field of arbitrary orientation and magnitude up to 400 mT at room temperature and probed the magneto-optical response of capped, ferromagnetic Fe, Ni(20)Fe(80), Co, Ni(80)Fe(20), and Ni thin films on ZnO substrates in the spectral range from 300 to 1100 nm. We determined the off-diagonal elements in the magneto-optical dielectric tensor under saturated magnetization conditions in the sample surface plane via a model analysis. The off-diagonal elements depend on the net spin polarization and the electronic band structure of the ferromagnetic thin films. For the pure ferromagnetic metals Fe, Co, and Ni, the converted off-diagonal elements agree well with the reported experimental optical conductivity data. As a result we use the extracted wavelength-dependent magneto-optical coupling constant to predict the wavelength-dependent magneto-optical response of different Ni/Fe multilayer structures.