Determination of the local variation of the magnetic properties of liquid‐phase epitaxial iron garnet films

This paper supplements and assesses an optical measuring technique for the local determination of the cubic and uniaxial anisotropy fields K1/Ms and Ku/Ms in uniaxial magnetic films reported in a recent paper. Graphs for the quick evaluation of the Ku/Ms values are given. The accuracy of the method is assessed by comparison with FMR measurements. The origin of the nonuniformity in the domain pattern of a (111) LPE garnet film with the chemical composition Y2.5Gd0.5Fe4Ga1O12 grown on a GGG substrate is investigated by local optical measurements of the magnetic film parameters K1/Ms, Ku/Ms, compensation temperature, and magneto‐optic Faraday rotation. It is correlated with local structural parameters of the substrate as stress birefringence from ellipsometric measurements and inhomogeneity of the lattice constant measured by x‐ray topography.