Magnetically Reconfigurable Toroidal Metasurfaces

Abstract

Harnessing electron spin within limited dimensions under applied magnetic fields can lead to spin‐assisted tunable light‐matter interactions, which form a crucial step in developing frequency‐agile opto‐spintronic structures toward next generation photonic devices. For this purpose, spin‐dependent magneto transport phenomena derived from ferromagnetic (FM)/nonmagnetic (NM) multilayer structures have recently emerged as a useful tool for dynamically tailoring electromagnetic waves. With this pretext, five layers of aluminum (Al)/nickel (Ni) based multilayer thin films in sub skin depth regime are studied in terahertz domain under low‐intensity (0 to 30 mT) magnetic fields while systematically varying the NM spacer layer (sandwiched between the FM layers) from 8 to 18 nm. Such thin multi‐layer films demonstrate conductivity variations up to ≈40% for 30 mT of applied field. Utilizing the same multilayer configurations, magnetic field induced tunability in a metasurface design is investigated that simultaneously manifests toroidal, dipolar, and other higher‐order modes. Further, multipolar analysis reveals that the nonradiative toroidal and radiative dipole modes can be enhanced by almost 56% and 183%, respectively, under 0–30 mT magnetic fields. Such magnetic field‐induced simultaneous control over radiative and non‐radiative resonances can be pivotal for next generation terahertz magnetophotonic devices.