Gigantic Enhancement of Magneto-Chiral Effect in Photonic Crystals

TL;DR

This paper proposes a theoretical method to significantly enhance the magneto-chiral effect using photonic crystals made of multiferroic materials, potentially enabling easier experimental observation.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to amplify the magneto-chiral effect in photonic crystal structures, which was previously too weak to observe easily.

Findings

Reflectivity difference enhanced by hundreds in multilayer structures

Significant increase in magneto-chiral effect in stripe structures

Potential for easier experimental detection of the MC effect

Abstract

We theoretically propose a method to enhance dramatically a magneto-chiral(MC) effect by using the photonic crystals composed of a multiferroic material. The MC effect, the directional birefringence even for unpolarized light, is so small that it has been difficult to observe experimentally. Two kinds of periodic structures are investigated; (a) a multilayer and (b) a stripe composed of a magneto-chiral material and air. In both cases, the difference in reflectivity between different magnetization directions is enhanced by a factor of hundreds compared with a bulk material.