ИСТИНА

A short light pulse propagating through a magnetic medium can demonstrate a nonlinear time dependence of Faraday rotation, if the medium optical width is comparable with a pulse length. The effect arises from a non-reciprocity of the Faraday rotation and multiple interference inside the medium. In this paper, the ultrafast temporal behavior of Faraday rotation is observed in magnetophotonic crystals by using a polarization-sensitive cross-correlation technique. One of the key features of photonic-band-gap materials is a possibility to achieve a very small light group velocity at the photonic bang-gap edge and at the defect mode. This leads to a row of bright “slow-light” phenomena and promising applications such as enhancement of nonlinear-optical and magneto-optical effects.