Cobalt dependence of the magneto-optical response in magnetoplasmonic nanodisks

In this work, we study the plasmon-mediated enhancement of the magneto-optical (MO) activity in the case of Au/Co/Au nanodisks as a function of the Co content. We show that both the spectral shape and amplitude of the complex polar Kerr rotation are modified by the relative amount of gold (diamagnetic) and cobalt (ferromagnetic). We demonstrate that such shape modification is dictated by the predominance of the absorptive or dispersive part of the MO constant in each material, which is intimately related to the origin of their MO activity. (C) 2010 American Institute of Physics. [doi: 10.1063/1.3474617]