Active magnetoplasmonic ruler.

Abstract

Plasmon rulers are an emerging concept in which the strong near-field coupling of plasmon nanoantenna elements is employed to obtain structural information at the nanoscale. Here, we combine nanoplasmonics and nanomagnetism to conceptualize a magnetoplasmonic dimer nanoantenna that would be able to report nanoscale distances while optimizing its own spatial orientation. The latter constitutes an active operation in which a dynamically optimized optical response per measured unit length allows for the measurement of small and large nanoscale distances with about 2 orders of magnitude higher precision than current state-of-the-art plasmon rulers. We further propose a concept to optically measure the nanoscale response to the controlled application of force with a magnetic field.