Conventional hadron interpolating fields, which utilise gauge-covariant Gaussian smearing, are ineffective in isolating ground state nucleons in a uniform background magnetic field. There is evidence that residual Landau mode physics remains at the quark level, even when QCD interactions are present. In this work, quark-level projection operators are constructed from the $SU(3) times U(1)$ eigenmodes of the two-dimensional lattice Laplacian operator associated with Landau modes. These quark-level modes are formed from a periodic finite lattice where both the background field and strong interactions are present. Using these eigenmodes, quark-propagator projection operators provides the enhanced hadronic energy-eigenstate isolation necessary for calculation of nucleon energy shifts in a magnetic field. The magnetic polarisability of both the proton and neutron is calculated using this method on the $32^3 times 64$ dynamical QCD lattices provided by the PACS-CS Collaboration. A chiral effective-field theory analysis is used to connect the lattice QCD results to the physical regime, obtaining magnetic polarisabilities of $beta^p = 2.79(22)({}^{+13}_{-18}) times 10^{-4}$ fm$^3$ and $beta^n = 2.06(26)({}^{+15}_{-20}) times 10^{-4}$ fm$^3$, where the numbers in parantheses describe statistical and systematic uncertainties.
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