Absence of detectable current-induced magneto-optical Kerr effects in Pt, Ta, and W

We explore the possibility to detect spin accumulation due to the spin Hall effect (SHE) by means of the magneto-optical Kerr effect (MOKE). For this purpose, we utilize the generalized magneto-optical ellipsometry (GME), which enables the disentanglement of different magnetization components contri...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Applied physics letters 2016-10, Vol.109 (17)
Main Authors: Riego, Patricia, Vélez, Saül, Gomez-Perez, Juan M., Arregi, Jon Ander, Hueso, Luis E., Casanova, Fèlix, Berger, Andreas
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accumulation
Applied physics
Ellipsometry
Hall effect
High temperature effects
Kerr effects
Kerr magnetooptical effect
Luminous intensity
Optics
Polarization
Tantalum
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Summary:We explore the possibility to detect spin accumulation due to the spin Hall effect (SHE) by means of the magneto-optical Kerr effect (MOKE). For this purpose, we utilize the generalized magneto-optical ellipsometry (GME), which enables the disentanglement of different magnetization components contributing to the resulting MOKE signal, and perform measurements for three different materials: Pt, W, and Ta. Although we observe a current-induced effect in the light intensity in our polarization sensitive GME setup, it does not arise from a SHE-induced light polarization signal in any of the materials, but from a change in reflectivity due to heating effects. Based on the sensitivity achieved in our experiments, we conclude that state-of-the-art magneto-optical methods utilizing linear optics are not sufficiently sensitive to detect SHE-induced spin accumulation in these metals.
ISSN:0003-6951
1077-3118
DOI:10.1063/1.4966276