 Science 23 October 2009: Vol. 326. no. 5952, pp. 529 - 530
Link to paper
Harald Giessen1 and Ralf Vogelgesang2 1 Physikalisches Institut, Universität Stuttgart, 70550 Stuttgart, Germany.
2 Max-Planck-Institut für Festkörperforschung, 70569 Stuttgart, Germany. E-mail:
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Since the work of James Clerk Maxwell and Heinrich Hertz, we have known that light is an electromagnetic wave. An intricate mechanism generates magnetic fields around the electric fields, and vice versa. In the optical-wavelength range, experimental studies have been limited to probing only the electric-field components. On page 550 of this issue, Burresi et al. (1) report direct measurements of the magnetic-field components of light obtained with a nanostructured metallic probe at the tip of a sharp glass fiber. |
