Magneto-optical properties of ferromagnetic/nonferromagnetic interfaces: Application to Co/Au(111) - art. no. 155405

An approach is proposed to give a reliable description of the ferromagnetic /nonferromagnetic interface contributions to magneto-optical (MO) Kerr effe ct. We show that well chosen magneto-optical parameters related to the inte rfaces and extracted from the experimental data are independent on the angl e of incidence and the polarization of the incident light. They are also in variant with respect to the optical properties and thicknesses of sandwichi ng layers. The method was tested on the Au/Co/Au(111) system. It was found that the assumptions and predictions of the theoretical description agree w ith the experimental observations. Further analysis of the experimental dat a shows indirectly that a significant part of the MO interface-induced effe cts are coming from the electronic hybridization at Au/Co interfaces. Conse quently, the data could be a useful source of information for ab initio cal culations of the layer-resolved permittivity tensor.