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Abstract All‐optical control and detection of magnetic states for high‐density recording necessitate nanophotonic approaches to amplify local light intensity below the diffraction limit. Sculpting the near‐field phase and polarization can additionally strengthen magneto‐optical effects that rely on circularly polarized pulses, such as all‐optical helicity‐dependent switching, imaging, and spin‐wave excitation. Here, high‐refractive‐index dielectric nanoantennas illuminated with circularly polarized light resonantly enhance local electric field rotation by more than sixfold within [Pt/Co]Nthin films. Sub‐wavelength arrays of amorphous Si nanodisks, or metasurfaces, patterned on perpendicularly magnetized films support Mie‐type resonances that modulate reflection and transmission dissymmetry by >±2% in experiments. Spatial and spectral interference between dipolar modes, proximity effects, and gain are evaluated by varying disk aspect ratio, metasurface–metal separation, and magnetic film thickness, respectively. Simulated enhancements in magnetic circular birefringence and differential absorption are correlated with amplified local field rotation at electric dipolar modes. Greater achievable amplifications are shown via simulations with single‐crystalline Si metasurfaces exhibiting lower losses, including a 12‐fold strengthened electric field rotation within ferromagnetic layers. The metasurface design rules established here could enable nanoscale localization of all‐optical magnetic switching with lowered laser fluence thresholds, as well as enhanced magneto‐optical responses for light‐assisted reading in spintronic devices.
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Detection of Hybrid Optical Anapoles in Dielectric Microspheres
Abstract Nonradiating optical anapoles are special configurations of charge‐current distributions that do not radiate. It was theoretically predicted that, for microspheres, electric and magnetic dipolar coefficients can simultaneously vanish by engineering the incident light, leading to the excitation of nonradiatinghybridoptical anapoles. In this work, the experimental detection of hybrid optical anapoles in dielectric microspheres (TiO2) is reported using dual detection optical spectroscopy, developed to enable sequential measurement of forward and backward scattering under tightly‐focused Gaussian beam (TFGB) illumination. The results show that the excitation of TiO2microspheres (diameter,d≈1 µm) under TFGB illumination leads to the appearance of scattering minima in both the forward and backward directions within specific wavelength ranges. These scattering minima are found to be due to vanishing electric and magnetic dipolar coefficients associated with hybrid optical anapoles. The ability to confine electromagnetic fields associated with hybrid optical anapoles can give rise to several novel optical phenomena and applications.
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- PAR ID:
- 10625639
- Publisher / Repository:
- Wiley Blackwell (John Wiley & Sons)
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Advanced Optical Materials
- Volume:
- 13
- Issue:
- 27
- ISSN:
- 2195-1071
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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