Optical properties and Faraday magneto-optical effects of highly transparent novel Tb2Zr2O7 fluorite ceramics

A novel magneto-optical transparent Tb2Zr2O7 ceramic with a high in-line transmittance of similar to 76.2% at 635 nm (-98.2% of the theoretical transmittance of perfect Tb2Zr2O7 single crystal) was successfully fabricated by vacuum sintering from its solid-phase reactive fluorite particle. In the visible region, the Tb2Zr2O7 bulk material was found to have a high refractive index of around 2.10 +/- 0.03 and an optical basicity of 0.985 +/- 0.015 while the electronic polarizability of the O2- anion in the Tb2Zr2O7 system generally remained constant at 2.45 +/- 0.06 angstrom(3). The Faraday effect results revealed that the transparent Tb2Zr2O7 ceramic had Verdet constants of -400 +/- 4, -260 +/- 4, and- 62 +/- 2 rad.T-1.m(-1) at 515, 635, and 1064 nm, respectively, which were roughly 1.9-fold higher than the commercial Tb3Ga5O12 single crystal. Our outcomes demonstrated that the developed optical functional Tb2Zr2O7 ceramic has potential application as an excellent magneto-optical material.