Magnetic-field enhancement in gold nanosandwiches

Using dispersive finite-difference time-domain (D-FDTD) simulations, we show that a pair of gold nanodisks stacked in a 'sandwich'-like (end-fire) configuration produces a large enhancement of the magnetic field when irradiated with a plane optical wave, if the distance between the nanodisks is optically small. The effect, which can be rationalized in terms of a magnetic dipole resonance, is due the excitation of a hybridized asymmetric plasmon mode, in which the induced electrical dipoles in the two disks oscillate out-of-phase. The strong magnetic response, together with the simple morphology, suggests that Au nanosandwiches are suitable elementary building blocks for optical metamaterials that exhibit negative refraction.