A simple experiment for determining Verdet constants using：费尔德常数测定使用一个简单的实验.pdfVIP

A simple experiment for determining Verdet constants using alternating current magnetic fields Aloke Jain, Jayant Kumar, Fumin Zhou, and Lian Li Department of Physics, Center for Advanced Materials, University of Massachusetts Lowell, Lowell, Massachusetts 01854 Sukant Tripathy Department of Chemistry, Center for Advanced Materials, University of Massachusetts Lowell, Lowell, Massachusetts 01854 Received 20 July 1998; accepted 15 December 1998 A simple experiment suitable for a senior undergraduate and graduate laboratory on the measurement of Faraday rotation using ac magnetic fields is described. The apparatus was used to measure the wavelength dependence of Verdet constants for several materials. A concentration-dependent study on ferric chloride water solution was also carried out to demonstrate that the diamagnetic and paramagnetic contributions to Faraday rotation have opposite signs. © 1999 American Association of Physics Teachers. I. INTRODUCTION in noise. The Verdet constants of several materials com- monly available in the laboratory were determined at differ- Faraday rotation1 is the rotation of the plane of polariza- ent wavelengths and compared with published data.8,9 tion of light due to magnetic-field-induced circular birefrin- gence in a material. In a nonabsorbing or weakly absorbing II. EXPERIMENT medium a linearly polarized monochromatic light beam pass- ing through the material along the direction of the applied The experimental setup is schematically shown in Fig. 1. magnetic field experiences circular