Optical Magnetism in Nanophotonics and Optical Matter

Understanding light-matter interactions in the near-field regime is crucial towards making advances in optical matter and nanophotonics. However, the approach for much of the previous work in these topics is based on analyzing the electric field component of light and the properties of matter that closely relate to the electric field. Since the relative magnetic permeability of most materials is negligible at optical frequencies, the magnetic field component of light-matter interactions was often foregone as a complementary value. Recently, new nanophotonic structures and optical matter building blocks have been fabricated with non-negligible effective magnetic properties. Thus, it is the goal of this thesis to investigate new phenomena and applications in optical matter and nanophotonics based on magnetic light-matter interactions. In this thesis, it is observed that optically magnetic nanoparticles experience the novel Transverse Scattering Force, due to the photonic Hall effect, causing them to undergo trapping behavior that is far from analogous to electric field-based optical trapping. Using the same optically magnetic particles to form the building blocks of nanophotonic structures on conducting substrates, as well as to couple to electronic molecular transitions, it is discovered that the interaction between the electric and magnetic dipole modes and images gives rise to novel scattering behavior and that non-metallic optically magnetic nanostructures can induce a small Purcell effect. The applications for this study on magnetic light-matter interactions in optical matter and nanophotonics include mesoscopic quantum physics, nano-scale machines, and electromagnetic cloaking.