LIGHT-SCATTERING FROM SPIN-WAVES IN THIN-FILMS AND LAYERED SYSTEMS

Brillouin light scattering (BLS) is now established as a powerful tool for the investigation of spin waves in layered magnetic structures. Due to the strong magneto-optical interaction in the majority of magnetic metals BLS allows the examination of spin waves in films with extremely small thicknesses down to 1-2 monolayers. This gives us the opportunity to obtain important information about magnetic properties of such two-dimensional systems. Applied to magnetic bilayers and multilayers, BLS makes it possible to elucidate collective excitations in these complex structures as well as to analyse mechanisms of the interlayer coupling. The restricted geometry of layered systems considerably influences the interaction of spin waves with light resulting in many peculiar features of the light-scattering phenomenon.