Brillouin Light Scattering from Magnetic Excitations in Superparamagnetic and Ferromagnetic Co–Al–O Granular Films

A systematic study of Brillouin light scattering (BLS) from superparamagnetic (SPM) and ferromagnetic (FM) Co–Al–O granular films was performed under magnetic fields of up to 4.6 kOe in the standard backscattering geometry at room temperature. The SPM and FM boundary, defined as the Co composition at which the exchange field vanishes, was found to be located at xC(Co) = 59.3 ± 1.3 at. %. From FM films we observed a pair of bulk spin-wave peaks on both the positive- and negative-frequency sides and a surface localized Damon–Eshbach peak only on the positive-frequency side under the present scattering conditions. From SPM films, a pair of broader but propagative excitation peaks with asymmetric intensity were observed on both frequency sides in a spectrum. We performed a numerical analysis of the BLS spectrum by employing the theory developed by Camley and Mills (CM) while retaining dipole and exchange couplings for FM films and only dipole coupling for SPM films. The CM theory successfully reproduced the o...