Magnetic circular dichroism study on YIG films

Abstract
This paper presents the temperature dependence (300 — 1.8 K) of the magnetic circular dichroism (MCD) spectrum of YIG in the 19 000-33 000 cm -1 energy range. MCD data are analysed in terms of a model of two sublattices with additive contributions. This analysis provides strong support to the current picture that optical transitions involve simultaneous excitations on the two sublattices. Furthermore, our MCD data enable several new excited states to be located accurately