Temperature dependence of Kerr rotation for Ni film

We measured the temperature dependence of the Kerr rotation spectrum of a Ni polycrystalline film. We observed an increment of 35% for the polar Kerr rotation at 3.18 eV when the temperature was decreased from 300 to 84 K. This effect is much larger than the increment of 4% observed in the saturation magnetization over the same temperature range. The experimental data at low‐temperature are in excellent agreement with published ab initio calculations, whereas the variation of the Kerr rotations with temperature may be attributed to the rearrangement of electrons in the 3d bands.