Magnetic inverted photonic crystals: A polarized neutron scattering study

This work is devoted to a small-angle polarized neutron scattering study of the structure and magnetic properties of nickel inverted photonic crystals. Depending on the intensity of the small-angle scattering, diffraction maximums up to fourth-order reflections, which correspond to scattering from the highly ordered structures of the test samples, are observed. Several contributions to the scattering are analyzed: a nuclear contribution; a magnetic contribution; a contribution depending on an external magnetic field; and a nuclear magnetic interference, which shows a correlation between magnetic and nuclear structures. It is found that a magnetization reversal process, which was represented by a standard hysteresis curve, for weak fields was accompanied by both domain formation and coherent magnetization rotation from the field direction to directions caused by geometric structure peculiarities.