Plasmon-induced magneto-optical activity in nanosized gold disks

In this Letter we show that nanostructures made out of pure noble metals can exhibit measurable magneto-optic activity at low magnetic fields. This phenomenon occurs when the localized surface plasmon resonance of the nanostructure is excited in the presence of a static magnetic field parallel to the propagation of incident light. The large magneto-optical response observed comes from an increase of the magnetic Lorentz force induced by the large collective movement of the conduction electrons in the nanostructures when the resonance is excited.