Nanoscale Control over Magnetic Light-Matter Interactions

Light-matter interactions are often considered driven by the electric optical field alone, ignoring the magnetic component of light. However, this magnetic component plays a key role in many optical processes, such as chiral light-matter interactions, ultrasensitive detection, enhancement of Raman optical activity, photon-avalanching, or forbidden photochemistry, which makes the manipulation of magnetic processes extremely important. For instance, it was demonstrated in Eu<sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">3</sup>+ ions that magnetic emission could be manipulated by tuning the local magnetic quantum environment surrounding magnetic dipoles by means of dielectric or plasmonic nanostructures [1], [2]. Along the same line, it is also possible to manipulate the electric and magnetic excitation of these ions by controlling the electric and magnetic fields distribution of the excitation light [3].