Magneto-optical epitaxial bismuth-substituted yttrium iron garnet thin films on a diamagnetic substrate for low temperature applications

The uprising interest in the integration of the magneto-optical iron garnets into the field of quantum information processing imposes requirements for the damping parameter and optical properties at low temperatures. Typically, high quality iron garnet films are mostly grown epitaxially on the paramagnetic substrates that have rare-earth elements in its composition, which leads to an increase of their magnetic damping at temperatures below 100 K. Here, we epitaxially grew magneto-optical ferromagnetic garnet films on a diamagnetic yttrium scandium gallium garnet substrate to demonstrate narrow ferromagnetic resonance (FMR) linewidth at temperature range from 300 K to 4 K. The maximum Faraday angle measured at wavelength of 660 nm is ΘF = 0.34 ⋅103 deg/cm at 65 K. The FMR linewidth of the iron garnet film gets slightly larger as temperature decreases, but still remains at a level of 35 Oe at 4 GHz even at 4 K. The investigated iron garnet thin films grown on diamagnetic substrates can be successfully implemented in low-temperature technological applications that require low damping and high magneto-optical response. •Bismuth-iron-yttrium garnet (Bi:YIG) films were grown on a nonmagnetic substrate.•Bi:YIG films exhibit anarrow FMR line in the wide temperature range.•The FMR line width hardly increases in the temperature range from 300 to 4 K.•The measured Faraday angle of Bi:YIG is θF=0.34∗103 deg/cm.