Magnetic Materials and Optical Materials

Magnetic materials are materials which display magnetic properties and they are classified in terms of their properties and uses. Soft magnetic material is easily magnetized and demagnetized, whereas permanent magnetic material is difficult to demagnetize. Materials in between permanent and soft are almost completely used as recording media and have no other general term to describe them. Other classifications for types of magnetic materials are subsets of soft or hard materials, such as magnetoresistive and magnetostrictive materials. Optical materials which are reflecting, absorbing, focusing an optical beam, the efficiency of a specific material at each task is sturdily wavelength dependent, thus a full understanding of the contact between light and matter is vital.