Optical study of magnetic anisotropy of ferromagnetic thin films

This work deals with the comparison of magneto-transport and magneto- optical methods for magnetic anisotropy measurements on a GaMnAs semicon- ductor. We performed measurements in the magnetotransport setup, and we determined the anisotropic constants from the study of the planar Hall effect. In the magneto-optical setup we studied the Voigt effect and from the obtained results we estimated the magnetic anisotropy of the sample. Our measurements have shown that both methods give analogous results. However, the use of the magnetooptical method has its limitations, which are reflected in the data processing itself. If the optical signal contains a contribution of non-magnetic origin, the analysis fails. At the end of the work we proposed a modified method of data analysis which managed to improve the obtained results.