The inverse Faraday effect at Mie resonances

Abstract

Nowadays, dielectric nanophotonics enables almost lossless resonant interaction between light and matter at the nanoscale. We show both theoretically and by electromagnetic simulations, that the peculiar nature of Mie-resonance induced effective magnetic fields contrasts sharply with the optomagnetism of smooth bulk materials. Mie resonances produce strongly nonuniform effective magnetic fields generated by the inverse Faraday effect. Different orders of optical resonances are characterized by different types of the effective magnetic field patterns. The number of point-like inverse Faraday effect sources can be controlled by adjusting the pump wavelength, allowing for the selective launch of spin waves with submicron wavelengths. A distinguish feature of the Mie-resonance-induced effective magnetic fields is the vortex structure that can be used for the magnetic skyrmion generation. The proposed approach considerably broadens the scope of nanoscale optomagnetism.