EXPLORATION OF A NEW MAGNETIZATION-GRADIENT-RELATED MAGNETOOPTICAL EFFECT

A recently discovered new Magneto-optical effect is further explored. The effect consists in a magnetization-gradient induced birefringence, which manifests itself in unexpected domain boundary contrasts largely independent of the properties of the domain walls. The symmetry properties derived for the new effect are confirmed by systematic experiments on silicon iron. For a large variety of materials the relative magnitude of the effect is measured and found to be of the same order as that of the conventional Kerr effect, but largely independent of the actual wall width. The new effect leads to surprising new aspects of complicated domain patterns which supplement the information obtained from conventional Kerr microscopy. © 1990 IEEE