A new optical Faraday rotator using a fibrous Ce-substituted yttrium-iron-garnet (Ce:YIG) single crystal was developed. The fibrous Ce:YIG single crystal was successfully grown by the floating-zone method with infrared-assisted YAG laser heating at a fast growth rate. This crystal has a good quality and shows a better figure-of-merit for an optical Faraday rotator at wavelength λ=1.55 μm compared with commonly used Bi-substituted YIG films. Ce:YIG single crystals grown by our method are expected to reduce the cost of optical isolators
Published in:
Microwave Theory and Techniques, IEEE Transactions on
(Volume:47
,
Issue:
12
)
Date of Publication: Dec 1999