ABSTRACT
Here we demonstrate a novel magnetoplasmonic heterostructure for efficient control of light. It consists of gold nanoparticles embedded in a thin magnetic film covered with a gold layer pierced with periodic nanoslit array. Unique feature of the proposed structure is that it supports four different types of optical modes in the same frequency range including localized and propagating surface plasmons along with waveguide modes. A peculiar magneto-optical response appears at the frequencies of the mode hybridization. The most important result comes from hybridization of the localized and propagating plasmons leading to a significant increase of the magneto-optical effect intensity.
ABSTRACT
Nowadays, spintronics considers magnetic domain walls as a kind of nanodeviÑe that demands for switching much less energy in comparison to homogeneous process. We propose and demonstrate a new concept for the light control via electric field applied locally to a magnetic domain wall playing the role of nanodevice. In detail, we charged a 15-µm-thick metallic tip to generate strong non-uniform electric field in the vicinity of the domain wall in the iron garnet film. The electric field influences the domain wall due to flexomagnetoelectric effect and causes the domain wall shift. The resulting displacement of the domain wall is up to 1/3 of domain width and allows to demonstrate a novel type of the electrically controlled magneto-optical shutter. Polarized laser beam focused on the electric-field-driven domain wall was used to demonstrate the concept of a microscale Faraday modulator. We obtained different regimes of the light modulation - linear, nonlinear and tri-stable - for the same domain wall with corresponding controllable displacement features. Such variability to control of domain wall's displacement with spatial scale of about 10 µm makes the proposed concept very promising for nanophotonics and spintronics.
