Mechanisms of the Magneto-Optical Activity of Rare-Earth Ions in Rare-Earth Iron Garnet Single Crystals

The magnetic and magneto-optical properties of the typical representatives of three rare-earth iron garnets (RIG) groups: with heavy rare-earth elements Yb, Er, Dy, Tb; with elements from the middle of lanthanide series Gd, Sm, and with light rare-earth element Nd are presented. In contradistinction to other work on the Faraday rotation, which were done only at 1152 nm (8696 $cm^{-1}$), here we present FR spectra obtained in the energy region 5500-20000 $cm^{-1}$ with high optical resolution. The investigations have been done at temperatures of 5, 82, 130, 295 K using magnetic field up to 25 kOe applied parallel to the [111] crystallographic axis of the crystals. It has been shown that the contribution proportional to the magnetic field and independent of temperature to the mixing of the ground state multiplets exceeds the paramagnetic contribution in YbIG, ErIG, GdIG, SmIG. In Tb and Dy iron garnets contributions from the two mechanisms have opposite signs, and the paramagnetic mechanism gives the greatest contribution to the Faraday rotation. Nevertheless, the contribution of the diamagnetic mechanism, caused by the influence of the exchange field in the iron sublattices on rare-earth ions, is significant, and it is necessary to take it into account. Anomalously large magneto-optical activity is observed in NdYIG. This is the result of contributions of the same sign and approximately equal in magnitude from the paramagnetic and diamagnetic mechanisms.