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Linear optical birefringence of magnetic crystals

1984; IOP Publishing; Volume: 47; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1088/0034-4885/47/5/002

1361-6633

J. Ferré, G A Gehring,

Optical Polarization and Ellipsometry

The study of changes in the refractive indices (with consequent changes of birefringence) of a transparent magnetic crystal which accompany changes in the magnetic order is becoming more popular. The authors review why this is. The first reason is that birefringence can be measured very accurately: the different experimental arrangements are reviewed. The second reason is because a birefringence measurement is an integrational spectroscopic technique and therefore it is studied both experimentally and theoretically as a branch of magneto-optics and hence gives information on the detailed energy level structure of the solid. The third reason is that in a number of interesting systems the birefringence is proportional to the magnetic energy over a wide temperature range and it is often a more convenient method of obtaining the magnetic specific heat than direct specific heat measurements; this is particularly true in magnetic crystals which show low dimensional ordering. The last reason is that in all magnetic crystals the birefringence change should vary like one of the thermodynamic critical exponents near to the phase transition. They review in detail the reasons why birefringence studies have become so successful for measuring critical exponents in pure and particularly mixed crystals.