Abstract
This paper presents a new design of magnetooptic pick up which detects the phase shift of circular polarized light instead of the rotation of plane polarized light. The use of a polarizing beam splitter and a quarterwave plate allows theoretically 100% efficiency. Efficiency is important not only in order to reduce the laser power when recording but also to avoid the reflected light which would interfere with the output of the laser. We discuss the theory of circular polarized readout and describe on experiment on reading a rare earth iron garnet magnetooptic disk. In conclusion, we discuss the advantages and drawbacks of such a reading method.
