Abstract: We have investigated the optical and magneto-optical responses of nanoscale ferromagnetic disks by means of numerical simulations, using an extension of the discrete-dipole approximation. Specifically, we studied the case of 5 nm thick cobalt disks in the diameter range from 200 to 1000 nm , illuminated under normal incidence with a wavelength of ? = 632.8 nm . We furthermore assumed the magnetization to lie in the plane of the disk and to be oriented perpendicular to the electric field of the incoming electromagnetic wave, i.e., the transverse magneto-optical Kerr effect configuration. The induced polarization pattern and the near- and far-field optical and magneto-optical responses have been calculated, finding clear nanoscale confinement effects as one reduces the diameter of the disks. However, we also observe that the rather weak magneto-optical response essentially mimics the optical response, and we demonstrate that it can be calculated as a perturbation of the latter with a high degree of accuracy. This strong similarity between the optical and magneto-optical nanoscale confinement effects also results in the fact that the normalized magneto-optically induced far-field light intensity change, which is the quantity measured in experiments, is only weakly affected even in the case of sub-wavelength-sized disks.

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