Polar and longitudinal magnetooptic Kerr effect in Pt/Ni and Pd/Ni multilayers

The authors discuss magnetooptical spectroscopic studies of Pt/Ni and Pd/Ni multilayers. The films were grown onto glass (Pt/Ni) and mica (Pd/Ni) substrates by dual electron beam evaporation. In the Pt/Ni set the thickness of Pt layers was kept constant at 2 nm while that of Ni layers was 1.2 and 2.9 nm. For the Pd/Ni set the individual Ni and Pd layer thicknesses varied between one and ten monoatomic layers. Simultaneous polar and longitudinal magnetooptical Kerr rotation and ellipticity experiments were carried out in the spectral range between 1.5 and 5.2 eV. The observed line broadening, shift and/or splitting are assigned to an effect of the interface Ni-Pd (or Ni-Pt) layers