In this Letter, we introduce a new nanoantenna concept aimed at generating a single magnetic hot spot in the optical frequency range, thus confining and enhancing the magnetic optical field on the background of a much lower electric field. This nanoantenna, designed by applying Babinet's principle to the bowtie nanoaperture, takes the shape of a diabolo. It differs from the well-known bowtie nanoantenna in that the opposing pair of metal triangles are electrically connected through their facing tips. Thus instead of a large charge density accumulating at the air gap of the bowtie nanoantenna, leading to a large electric field, a high optical current density develops within the central "metal gap" of the diabolo nanoantenna, leading to a large magnetic field. Numerical simulation results on the first nanodiabolo geometries show a 2900-fold enhancement of the magnetic field at a wavelength of 2540 nm, confined to a 40-by-40 nm region near the center of the nanoantenna.

Radially polarized beams are beams for which the electric vector is radially distribu ted along the beam axis. Such beams are interesting for applications in which a total symmetry of the electric field is required. In this paper we propose an all-fiber method allowing the generation of radially, azimu thally, and hybrid polarized light beams in a rapid and simple way.

Magnetic dipole transitions in matter are known to be orders of magnitude weaker than their electric dipole counterparts. Nanophotonic and plasmonic structures have the potential of strongly enhancing the optical magnetic fields in the near field, making these nanostructures ideal candidates to control and enhance the emission of magnetic dipole transitions. Here we theoretically investigate the potential of resonant optical nanoantennas based on diabolo and on metal− insulator−metal diabolo configurations to strongly modify the magnetic dipole of emitters. We find that both configurations provide unprecedented 10 2 -to 10 3 -fold enhancement of the total and the radiative decay rates of a magnetic dipole moment. We show that these two nanoantennas have opposed effects on the quantum yield of the magnetic dipole, translating into different antenna efficiencies. Furthermore, by using a magnetic dipole moment as a theoretical optical nanosensor, we numerically mapped the behavior of the magnetic local density of states (MLDOS) in the entire plane close to the diabolo nanoantenna. We demonstrate the strong confinement and local enhancement of the MLDOS by the nanoantenna. As such, these results underscore the unique ability of optical nanoantennas to control light emission from magnetic dipoles, opening new technological avenues in the magneto-optical domain.