Optical Experiments with a Magnetically Rotatable Diffraction Grating

Abstract
A striped-domain thin magnetic film, when covered by a Bitter colloid, forms a diffraction grating. Because of its possible application in display devices this phenomenon is attracting current interest. The theory of the grating formation is developed, and it is shown that external fields can and do greatly improve the grating configuration and efficiency. Improvements in diffracted light flux efficiency of as much as four to one have been observed.