Magnetic field dependence of Cotton-Mouton rotation for magnetic fluid films

The azimuthal distribution of the transmitted intensity of a linearly polarized laser beam through a 6 mu m-thick magnetic fluid film was measured under various magnetic fields H normal to the direction of the light propagation to study the magnetic field dependent Cotton-Mouton (C-M) effect of the sample. Here, the azimuthal angle eta is the angle between the transmission axes of the polarizer and the analyzer. For obtaining the most significant variation in the polarization of the incident light, the angle between H and the polarization of the incident light theta is set to be 45 degrees. The I-eta curves were found to be symmetric with relative maximum at eta(I) (= max) around 0 degrees and minimum at eta(I = min) around 90 degrees. Furthermore, these curves showed a gradual shift up to Delta eta = 1.55 degrees with respect to the curve under zero magnetic field as H increased to 250 Oe. All the details will be discussed in this report. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.