Super-long longitudinal magnetization needle generated
by focusing an azimuthally polarized and phase-
modulated beam
Wangzi Ma (马旺子)
1
, Dawei Zhang (张大伟)
2
, Linwei Zhu (朱林伟)
1
,
and Jiannong Chen (陈建农)
1,
*
1
School of Physics and Optoelectronic Engineering, Ludong University, Yantai 264025, China
2
Engineering Research Center of Optical Instruments and Systems, Ministry of Education,
Shanghai Key Lab of Modern Optical Systems, School of Optical-Electrical and Computer Engineering,
University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai 200093, China
*Corresponding author: 13220935107@163.com
Received January 7, 2015; accepted March 16, 2015; posted online April 7, 2015
Based on the inverse Faraday effect, a super-long longitudinal magnetization needle can be induced by a trans-
versely polarized needle-shaped electric field. This needle-shaped electric field can be obtained in the focal vol-
ume of the objective by focusing an azimuthally polarized vortex beam that is modulated both radially and
azimuthally by a specifically designed annular phase filter. The numerical calculation shows that the full widths
at half-maximums in longitudinal direction and in transverse direction of the magnetization needle are 28λ and
0.27λ. The corresponding needle aspect ratio of 103 is more than ten times larger than that of the magnetization
needle fabricated by electron beam lithography.
OCIS codes: 210.3820, 260.5430, 350.5500, 060.5060.
doi: 10.3788/COL201513.052101.
The manipulation of magnetization in magnetic material,
particularly the generati on of a longitudinal magnetiza-
tion needle with a transverse subwavelength scale, is an
attractive issue in the field of applications such as spin
wave operation, magnetic data storage, atomic trapping,
and ferromagnetic semiconductor devices
[1–5]
. The high as-
pect ratio of the longitudinal magnetization needle is a sig-
nificant parameter. Currently, electron beam lithography
has enabled the fabrication of such longitudinal magneti-
zation with the aspect ratio of up to 9.3
[1]
. However, in
practical application, it is usually very expensive and
the near field procedure is very complicated. Alterna-
tively, based on the inverse Faraday effect (IFE), the mag-
netization of the magnetic materials can be realized by an
external electric field in all optical magnetic recording
[6–10]
.
The tightly focused electric field of an incident laser beam
with a high numerical aperture objective has been con-
ceived as an effective method to induce the desired mag-
netization. It has been demonstrated that focusing a
circularly polarized beam can generate a longitudinal
magnetization in the magnetic material and changing
the handedness of a circularly polarized beam can reverse
the direction of the longitudinal magnetization
[9–11]
.Asis
well known, a radially polarized beam is one of the cylin-
drical polarized beams that can be expressed as the super-
position of two circularly polarized beams with different
handedness. Various schemes of phase modulation along
with amplitude modulation of the incident radially polar-
ized beam have been proposed to confine the electric field
in a needle-shaped, diffraction-limited region and to extend
the focal depth along the propagation direction
[12–17]
.
However, the needles are dominantly longitudinal polar-
ized beam when a pure radially polarized beam is tightly
focused by a high numerical aperture objective, especially
when it is filtered by an annular aperture with a large inner
radius. They are incapable of inducing the desired longi-
tudinal magnetization needle owing to the depolarization
effect under the tightly focusing condition
[18]
. In 2013, a
nondiffracting needle-like focusing spot with a transversely
polarized field was demonstrated theoretically and exper-
imentally by engineering an incident radial-variant vector
field
[19]
. It is generated in the situation of paraxial focusing
and the transverse polarization states are different at dif-
ferent focal depths and at different radial positions. It is not
suitable for inducing needle-shaped longitudinal magneti-
zation. An azimuthally polarized beam is another cylindri-
cal polarized beam. Focusing it can also create a
transversely polarized beam at the focal volume. It has
been shown that a relatively long depth of focus
ð∼4.84λÞ of the electric field with only radial and azimuthal
components can be achieved by focusing an azimuthally
polarized beam modulated through a multibelt spiral phase
hologram
[20]
.
On the other hand, it has been demonstrated that op-
tical vortex beams with phase singularities can dramati-
cally change the intensity distribution of electric fields
in the focal volume when they are focused by a high
numerical aperture objective
[21,22]
. Further, the mutual in-
teraction between polarization singularities of cylindri-
cally polarized beams (azimuthally polarized beams or
radially polarized beams) and optical vortices can not only
change the spatial distribution but also the orientation of
COL 13(5), 052101(2015) CHINESE OPTICS LETTERS May 10, 2015
1671-7694/2015/052101(5) 052101-1 © 2015 Chinese Optics Letters