Optics and Photonics Society of Iran

In this paper, the axial magnetic field produced by the interaction of a circularly polarized laser beam with stainless steel target in mbar pressure has been investigated experimentally. To examine the magnetic field, the inverse Faraday effect has been utilized. Laser intensity on the target surface is 2.6×1013 W/cm2 and the laser pulse width and its energy are 48 ns and 570 mJ, respectively. The probe beam is a second harmonic of cavity damped Nd:YAG laser at 532 nm with 10 ns pulse-width that is synchronized with the interaction laser. The polarization state of the reflected field from plasma analyzed by using a set up consists of a fast detector, attenuator filters and an analyzer. Measurements show that the rotation of plane of polarization of the reflected field depends on the polarization state of the incident field. We have observed about 6 degrees for rotation of the probe beam plane of polarization that gives about 103 Gauss for the plasma axial magnetic field.