Eur. Phys. J. B 33, 297-310 (2003)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2003-00170-y

Modelling of magnetic effects in near-field optics^*

Fachbereich Physik, Universität Konstanz, Universitätsstrasse 10, 78457 Konstanz, Germany

Corresponding author: ^a Ursula.Schroeter@uni-konstanz.de

Received: 15 December 2002
Published online: 20 June 2003

Abstract

Green's dyadic technique represents a powerful tool for calculations in electrodynamics, especially in modelling optical properties of nanoscopic objects. The method does not only provide field distributions, but also maps of susceptibilities and densities of states. Whereas the formalism is well established for dielectrics and electric fields, I present here a straight forward extension to tensors of both electric and magnetic type as well as mixed ones and furthermore to the situation where objects with dielectric and magnetic permeabilities are present together. As examples, characteristic field patterns are compared for elementary dielectric and magnetic perturbations. Green's tensors calculated for a coral structure reveal that mixed susceptibilities can exhibit other symmetries than pure electric or magnetic ones. Maps of all tensor components can thus give essential clues to the interpretation of near-field images.