Plasmonic shock waves and solitons in a nanoring

We apply the hydrodynamic theory of electron liquid to demonstrate that a circularly polarized radiation induces the diamagnetic, helicity-sensitive dc current in a ballistic nanoring. This current is dramatically enhanced in the vicinity of plasmonic resonances. The resulting magnetic moment of the nanoring represents a giant increase of the inverse Faraday effect. With increasing radiation intensity, linear plasmonic excitations evolve into the strongly nonlinear plasma shock waves. These excitations produce a series of the well-resolved peaks at the THz frequencies. We demonstrate that the plasmonic wave dispersion transforms the shock waves into solitons. The predicted effects should enable multiple applications in a wide frequency range (from the microwave to terahertz band) using optically controlled ultralow-loss electric, photonic, and magnetic devices.