Damping in thin ferromagnetic films

The understanding of the damping processes of the magnetization dynamics is an important issue. Several different damping channels are proposed. Here the importance of magnon-magnon processes for the damping is investigated with a magneto-optical method. This method allows to determine the length of the magnetization vector and therefore gives an indication for magnon-magnon processes. Higher order magneto-optic effects are also taken into account, which allows the determination of the quadratic magneto-optic constant.
This work was supported by the DFG-Graduiertenkolleg 792 and the EU-RTN ULTRASWITCH network (HPRN-CT-2002-00318).