Polarization modulation technique for magneto-optical quantitative vector magnetometry

This letter presents a method for determining the orientation of the magnetization vector during the reversal process in ferromagnetic films using a conventional setup for magneto-optical ellipsometry based on the photoelastic modulation technique for the modulation of polarization. The orientation is obtained through the determination of three orthogonal reduced (i.e., normalized to saturation value) magnetization components as a function of the external field. Test measurements on a reference sample are also presented, which confirm the reliability of the measurements and show what kind of information can be retrieved. (C) 2000 American Institute of Physics. [S0003-6951(00)03737-2].