Magnetooptical Properties of Surface Plasma Waves on Copper, Silver, Gold, and Aluminum

Surface plasma waves on Cu, Ag, Au, and Al are excited with HeNe laser light (λ = 632.8 nm) by the prism method in the presence of a magnetic field perpendicular to the plane of incidence. The dip at the surface plasma resonance which is observed in the reflectivity when tuning the angle of incidence shows nonreciprocal behaviour with respect to magnetic field or light propagation reversal. Using an ac magnetic field and lock‐in technique the nonreciprocal changes of the reflectivity can be measured with fields of only 0.2 T. The components of the magnetooptical tensor are determined and discussed in the framework of a Drude model.