A First Principle Study on Magneto-Optical Effects and Magnetism in Ferromagnetic Semiconductors Y$_3$Fe$_5$O$_{12}$ and Bi$_3$Fe$_5$O$_{12}$

TL;DR

This study provides a comprehensive theoretical analysis of magneto-optical effects and magnetic properties in Y$_3$Fe$_5$O$_{12}$ and Bi$_3$Fe$_5$O$_{12}$, revealing their strong MO effects and potential for spintronic applications.

Contribution

It offers the first detailed density functional theory investigation of the electronic, optical, and MO properties of YIG and BIG, highlighting their large MO effects and unique spin characteristics.

Findings

Both materials exhibit large Kerr and Faraday rotation angles.

BIG is identified as a single spin semiconductor with spin-down valence and conduction bands.

Calculated spectra agree well with experimental data.

Abstract

The magneto-optical (MO) effects not only are a powerful probe of magnetism and electronic structure of magnetic solids but also have valuable applications in high-density data-storage technology. Yttrium iron garnet (Y$_3$Fe$_5$O$_{12}$) (YIG) and bismuth iron garnet (Bi$_3$Fe$_5$O$_{12}$) (BIG) are two widely used magnetic semiconductors with strong magneto-optical effects and have also attracted the attention for fundamental physics studies. In particular, YIG has been routinely used as a spin current injector. In this paper, we present a thorough theoretical investigation on magnetism, electronic, optical and MO properties of YIG and BIG, based on the density functional theory with the generalized gradient approximation plus onsite Coulomb repulsion. We find that both semiconductors exhibit large MO effects with their Kerr and Faraday rotation angles being comparable to that of best-known MO materials such as MnBi. Especially, the MO Kerr rotation angle for bulk BIG reaches -1.2$ ^{\circ}$ at photon energy $\sim2.4$ eV, and the MO Faraday rotation angle for BIG film reaches -74.6 $ ^{\circ}/\mu m$ at photon energy $\sim2.7$ eV. Furthermore, we also find that both valence and conduction bands across the MO band gap in BIG are purely spin-down states, i.e., BIG is a single spin semiconductor. These interesting findings suggest that the iron garnets will find valuable applications in semiconductor MO and spintronic nanodevices. The calculated optical conductivity spectra, MO Kerr and Faraday rotation angles agree well with the available experimental data. The main features in the optical and MO spectra of both systems are analyzed in terms of the calculated band structures especially by determining the band state symmetries and the main optical transitions at the $\Gamma$ point in the Brillouin zone.