Iron garnet crystals for magneto-optic light modulators at 1.064 μm

Faraday rotation and optical absorption measurements are reported for several magnetic iron garnets. The results show that certain compositions containing praseodymium (or possibly neodymium) should allow the operation of magneto-optic modulators at 1.064 μm, having less than 3 dB of optical loss and requiring less drive power per unit bandwidth than the best available diffraction-limited electro-optic modulators.