Currently, sensors invade into our everyday life to bring higher life standards, excellent medical diagnostic and efficient security. Plasmonic biosensors demonstrate an outstanding performance ranking themselves among best candidates for different applications. However, their sensitivity is still limited that prevents further expansion. Here we present a novel concept of magnetoplasmonic sensor with ultranarrow resonances and high sensitivity. Our approach is based on the combination of a specially designed one-dimensional photonic crystal and a ferromagnetic layer to realize ultralong-range propagating magnetoplasmons and to detect alteration of the environment refractive index via observation of the modifications in the Transversal Magnetooptical Kerr Effect spectrum. The fabrication of such a structure is relatively easy in comparison with e.g. nanopatterned samples. The fabricated heterostructure shows extremely sharp (angular width of 0.06°) surface plasmon resonance and even sharper magnetoplasmonic resonance (angular width is 0.02°). It corresponds to the propagation length as large as 106 μm which is record for magnetoplasmons and promising for magneto-optical interferometry and plasmonic circuitry as well as magnetic field sensing. The magnitude of the Kerr effect of 11% is achieved which allows for detection limit of 1∙10−6. The prospects of further increase of the sensitivity of this approach are discussed.

All-optical magnetization reversal with femtosecond laser pulses facilitates the fastest and least dissipative magnetic recording, but writing magnetic bits with spatial resolution better than the wavelength of light has so far been seen as a major challenge. Here, we demonstrate that a single femtosecond laser pulse of wavelength 800 nm can be used to toggle the magnetization exclusively within one of two 10-nm thick magnetic nanolayers, separated by just 80 nm, without affecting the other one. The choice of the addressed layer is enabled by the excitation of a plasmon-polariton at a targeted interface of the nanostructure, and realized merely by rotating the polarization-axis of the linearly-polarized ultrashort optical pulse by 90°. Our results unveil a robust tool that can be deployed to reliably switch magnetization in targeted nanolayers of heterostructures, and paves the way to increasing the storage density of opto-magnetic recording by a factor of at least 2.

Magnetometry and visualization of very small magnetic fields are vital for a large variety of the areas ranging from magnetocardiography and encephalography to nondistractive defectoscopy and ultra-low-frequency communications. It is very advantageous to measure magnetic fields using exchange-coupled spins in magnetically ordered media (flux-gate magnetometry).Here we introduce and demonstrate a novel concept of a roomtemperature magnetoplasmonic magnetic field sensor with high sensitivity and spatial resolution. It is based on the advanced fluxgate technique in which magnetization of the fully saturated magnetic film is rotated in the film plane and the monitored magnetic field is measured by detecting variation of transmittance through the sensing element: a magnetoplasmonic crystal. The experimental study revealed that such an approach allows one to reach the nT sensitivity level, which was limited by the noise of the laser. Moreover, we propose an approach to improve the sensitivity up to fT/Hz 1/2 and reach micrometer spatial resolution. Therefore, the demonstrated magnetoplasmonic magnetometry method is promising for mapping and visualization of ultrasmall magnetic fields.

A novel type of a plasmonic sensor based on a magnetophotonic plasmonic heterostructure with an ultrahigh-Q resonance is considered. A magnetoplasmonic resonance with an angular width of 0.06°, which corresponds to a Q factor of 700 and is a record value for magnetoplasmonic sensors, is experimentally demonstrated. It is shown that, owing to the excitation of long-propagation-range plasmons, the transverse magneto-optical Kerr effect is considerably enhanced and, thus, the sensitivity of the magnetoplasmonic sensor to variations in the refractive index increases to 18 RIU–1, where RIU is the refractive index unit. Numerical calculations indicate that the parameters of the magnetoplasmonic structure can be further optimized to attain sensitivities up to 5 × 103 RIU–1