Investigation of opto-magnetic effect in axially birefringent media and its opto-magnetic applications

This thesis aims at finding solutions for recording and storage challenges confronted in today's big data era. We focus on the magnetic recording since this is a widely used and stable technique. Our strategy is using the laser to control the magnetic domain in the birefringent magneto-optical materials. Circularly polarized light with helical phase front could transfer the angular momentum to the birefringent materials by means of the light-matter interaction. In this way, the magnetic state can be vectorial controlled, being transversely, longitudinally or arbitrarily 3D polarized. Thus all-optically 3D and multi-state opto-magnetic recording can be achieved.