Refinement of the quantitative magnetooptic domain observation technique

The potential of a quantitative evaluation of the magnetization vector with magnetooptical Kerr-effect methods is explored. The basic idea of calibrating the various effects by saturation experiments encounters some problems if spurious magnetization components are generated at high fields. It is found that two unanticipated optical effects have to be taken into account. One is the Faraday effect in the lenses of the microscope. The other complication arises from polar magnetization components which are induced at the edges and grain boundaries of a sample at high fields. These problems are overcome by suitable extrapolation routines and by combining experiments at different angles of incidence. Altogether, an accuracy of better than 10° in the magnetization angles can be achieved, making the method a suitable auxiliary tool in domain analysis