Magnetostatic spin-wave modes of an in-plane magnetized garnet-film disk

Macroscopic structures based on low-loss garnet films are an ideal model system for the space-resolved investigation of spin-wave dynamics. Here we investigate the dipolar eigenmodes of an in-plane magnetized garnet-film disk by means of scanning magneto-optical Faraday microscopy in the frequency domain. Due to the macroscopic dimensions of the studied samples, we have been able to image spatial profiles of the modes up to very high order. We find that the spatial distributions of the dynamic magnetization for the eigenmodes are strongly influenced by the intrinsic anisotropy of the dipolar spin-wave spectrum in an in-plane magnetized film. These experimental results are corroborated by micromagnetic simulations, which accurately reproduce the salient features of the modes.