Chemical reactions with nanomagnonics

Nanoplasmonics, or electron cloud oscillations in metals shrunk down to nanoscopic sizes, create high-intensity electric fields with large spatial gradients. Because these electric fields change so much on the pico- to nanoscale, all sorts of conventional “rules” in physics break down, such as the selection rules governing where energy can flow in molecules and materials. It turns out magnetic fields can also be compressed with nanomagnonic particles. With these compressed magnetic fields, we can break selection rules based on spin, which has a variety of applications ranging from quantum information processing to magnetoreception in biological organisms. We previously studied ferrimagnetic nanoparticles, but in fact, understanding what happens in antiferromagnets would be even more interesting because the magnons in antiferromagnets are nearly resonant with transitions relevant to radical reactions and fluorescent decay.