Interaction of Structured Light With Nanostructured Matter

ABSTRACT Although structured light has been extensively studied, its interaction with nanoscale matter has remained largely unexamined. Here, we demonstrate a symmetry‐dependent interaction between structured light and nanostructured absorbers by investigating the orbital‐angular‐momentum‐dependent extinction of gold nanodisk oligomers. Using a rigorous design framework, we fabricate diffractive optical elements via two‐photon‐polymerization grayscale lithography to generate three distinct flower‐like beam modes. Scanning these beams across oligomers of different symmetries reveals that extinction is maximized when the beam and structure share the same rotational symmetry. A semi‐analytical overlap model reproduces the observed trends with deviations consistently below 10 percentage points, confirming the robustness of the symmetry‐based interaction mechanism.