Enhancement of Brillouin light scattering signal with anti-reflection layers on magnetic thin films

Abstract The significant enhancement of Brillouin light scattering (BLS) spectroscopy intensity in a ferromagnetic thin film with an additional dielectric anti-reflection layer is experimentally investigated. The anti-reflection layer thickness dependent BLS measurements on ferromagnetic layers are performed systematically. Consequently, we observe that BLS signals are dramatically enhanced by more than 450% at a specific dielectric layer thickness due to the pure optical effect. Because of the large signal enhancements, the errors of the spin wave resonance peak frequencies are noticeably reduced as well. Since many magnetic properties such as the saturation magnetization, the surface anisotropy, and the exchange stiffness constant are determined by the spin wave resonance frequencies from the BLS spectra, the additional anti-reflection layer can help to improve the reliability of BLS experiments. Especially, the BLS signal improvement plays a crucial role in the precise determination of the interfacial Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (iDMI) energy density, since the iDMI energy density is calculated from the difference of Stokes and anti-Stokes resonance frequencies, which is typically order of 1 GHz.