Provided is a measuring device which has a focusing unit for focusing
light flux from a light source and irradiating it to a magnetic substance
to be measured, a half-turn asymmetric element acting only on the light
flux reflected by the magnetic substance to be measured and acting in
such a manner that its action on polarization distribution in a cross
section of the light flux has asymmetry nature about half-turn around an
optical axis in order to obtain sensitivity to in-plane magnetization
vector components of the magnetic substance to be measured, and a
polarization split detector for detecting a light amount of a
polarization component in one direction or separated each component of
polarization components orthogonal to each other of the light which
receives action of the half-turn asymmetric element so that the in-plane
magnetization vector component in one direction can be measured
separately from other components.