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An Exact Energy Conservation Law for Magneto-Optical Nanoparticles

Optics 2026-01-16 v1 Applied Physics

Abstract

Energy conservation imposes fundamental bounds on the polarizabilities of nanoparticles (NPs). While such bounds are well established for isotropic and bianisotropic NPs, they remain unexplored for magneto-optical NPs. Here, we derive the exact energy-conservation law governing the electric and magnetic dipolar response of axially symmetric magneto-optical NPs under general illumination conditions and arbitrary external magnetic fields. Two central results follow from energy conservation: (i) purely magneto-optical scattering, where the non-magnetic polarizability vanishes, is fundamentally forbidden, and (ii) strong magneto-optical scattering regimes, in which the magneto-optical polarizability dominates, are intriguingly allowed.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2601.10255,
  title  = {An Exact Energy Conservation Law for Magneto-Optical Nanoparticles},
  author = {Jorge Olmos-Trigo},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.10255},
  year   = {2026}
}