ABSTRACT
Paramagnetic crystals containing rare earth elements also have very large Verdet constants, often larger than those that can be obtained in paramagnetic glasses. Some of the most interesting of these are found in the form of the cubic aluminum and gallium garnets. As with glasses, crystals containing terbium often possess very high Verdet constants. Departure from the ideal behavior occurs for many reasons, including domain effects (such as finite coercivity and diffraction), the magnetocrystalline effects, and spatially nonuniform demagnetizing factors. At visible wavelengths, the increased absorption is partially compensated by larger values of Faraday rotation. The higher absorption at these wavelengths generally favors applications which exploit thin films rather than the bulk crystals. The conventional Faraday effect has been measured in a liquid crystal in which the molecular orientations were fixed and the light propagated along the molecular axes.
