Magneto-optical scattering from a nano-corrugated ferromagnetic film

Diffracted magneto optical Kerr effect (DMOKE) is a widely used technique for investigating magnetization distributions and reversal processes in periodic arrays of micron and submicron magnetic elements [1]. In most cases, the magnetic arrays are made of isolated magnetic entities where the magnetic interaction between them is limited to magnetic dipolar interactions. Little is known about what should be the effect on magnetic behavior of the arrays of connecting those entities. In this work we present an approach to analyse this effect. This is done by studying the magneto-optical properties of nanocorrugated ferrromagnetic surfaces. This corrugation is achived by different fabrication methods, such as ion beam etching or standard lift-off techniques, using thick sputtered films. The fabricated etching profile is a few nanometers and can be considered as a fluctuation of the bulk dielectric tensor [2,3].