Magneto-optical phenomena such as the Faraday and Kerr effects play a decisive role for establishing control over polarization and intensity of optical fields propagating through a medium. Intensity effects where the direction of light emission depends on the orientation of the external magnetic field are of particular interest as they can be used for routing the light. We report on a new class of transverse emission phenomena for light sources located in the vicinity of a surface, where directionality is established perpendicularly to the externally applied magnetic field. We demonstrate the routing of emission for excitons in a diluted-magnetic-semiconductor quantum well. The directionality is significantly enhanced in hybrid plasmonic semiconductor structures 1 arXiv:1712.05703v1 [cond-mat.mtrl-sci]

The transverse magneto-optical Kerr effect (TMOKE) in magnetite-based magneto-plasmonic crystals is studied experimentally and theoretically. We analyse angle-resolved TMOKE spectra from two types of structures where noble metallic stripes are incorporated inside a thin magnetite film or located on top of a homogeneous film. A multiple wide band enhancement of the TMOKE signal in transmission is demonstrated. The complex dielectric permittivity and gyration are experimentally determined using the ellipsometry technique as well as Faraday rotation and ellipticity measurements. The obtained parameters are used in rigorous coupled wave analysis (RCWA) calculations for studying the optical resonances. Our RCWA calculations of transmittance and TMOKE are in good agreement with the experimental data. The role of guiding and plasmonic modes in the TMOKE enhancement is revealed. We demonstrate that the TMOKE provides rich information about the studied optical resonances.

Magneto-optical spectroscopy based on the transverse magneto-optical Kerr effect (TMOKE) is a sensitive method for investigation of magnetically-ordered media. However, in magnetic materials the optical transitions are usually characterized by spectrally broad resonances with widths considerably exceeding the Zeeman splitting in the magnetic field. Here we investigate experimentally and theoretically the TMOKE in the vicinity of relatively narrow optical resonances provided by confined quantum systems. For experimen-1 arXiv:1810.13344v1 [cond-mat.mtrl-sci]

We demonstrate that in confined plasmonic metal structures subject to ultra-fast laser excitation electron thermal diffusion can provide relaxation faster than the energy transfer to the lattice. This relaxation occurs due to excitation of nanometer-sized hot spots in the confined structure and the sensitivity of its optical parameters to the perturbation in these regions. Both factors become essential when the plasmonic resonance condition is met for both excitation and detection. A pump-probe experiment on plasmonic gold lattices shows sub-picosecond relaxation with the characteristic times well-described by a two-temperature model. The results suggest that dynamical optical response in plasmonic structures can be tuned by selection of the structural geometry as well as the choice of wavelength and polarization of the excitation and detection light.

No abstract