We experimentally demonstrate plasmonic nanocircuits operating as subdiffraction directional couplers optically excited with high efficiency from free-space using optical Yagi-Uda style antennas at lambda(0) = 1550 nm. The optical Yagi-Uda style antennas are designed to feed channel plasmon waveguides with high efficiency (45% in coupling, 60% total emission), narrow angular directivity (<40 degrees), and low insertion loss. SPP channel waveguides exhibit propagation lengths as large as 34 mu m with adiabatically tuned confinement and are integrated with ultracompact (5 x 10 mu m(2)), highly dispersive directional couplers, which enable 30 dB discrimination over Delta lambda = 200 nm with only 0.3 dB device loss

Plasmonic coupling effect between two gold nanospheres for efficient second-harmonic generation J. Appl. Phys. 112, 083102 (2012) Controlled spatial switching and routing of surface plasmons in designed single-crystalline gold nanostructures Appl. Phys. Lett. 101, 141114 (2012) Negative and positive photoconductivity modulated by light wavelengths in carbon nanotube film Appl. Phys. Lett. 101, 123117 (2012) Polarizability of supported metal nanoparticles: Mehler-Fock approach

Abstract. High quality CdS nanowires suspended in air were optically pumped both below and above the lasing threshold. The polarization of the pump laser was varied while the nanowire emission was monitored in a 'head-on' measurement geometry. Highest pump-efficiency and most efficient absorption of the pump radiation are demonstrated for an incident electric field being polarized parallel to the nanowire axis. This polarization dependence was observed both above the lasing threshold and in the regime of amplified spontaneous emission. Measured Stokes parameters of the nanowire emission reveal that due to the onset of lasing the degree of polarization rapidly increases from approximately 15% to 85 %. Both, Stokes parameters and degree of polarization of the nanowire lasing emission are independent of the excitation polarization.

The interaction of light with matter strongly depends on the structure of the latter at wavelength scale. Ordered systems interact with light via collective modes, giving rise to diffraction. In contrast, completely disordered systems are dominated by Mie resonances of individual particles and random scattering. However, less clear is the transition regime in between these two extremes, where diffraction, Mie resonances and near-field interaction between individual scatterers interplay. Here, we probe this transitional regime by creating colloidal crystals with controlled disorder from two-dimensional self-assembly of bidisperse spheres. Choosing the particle size in a way that the small particles are transparent in the spectral region of interest enables us to probe in detail the effect of increasing positional disorder on the optical properties of the large spheres. With increasing disorder a transition from a collective optical response characterized by diffractive resonances to single particles scattering represented by Mie resonances occurs. In between these extremes, we identify an intermediate, hopping-like light transport regime mediated by resonant interactions between individual spheres. These results suggest that different levels of disorder, characterized not only by absence of long range order but also by differences in short-range correlation and interparticle distance, exist in colloidal glasses.

We demonstrate experimentally and numerically that in fiber tips as they are used in NSOMs azimuthally polarized electrical fields (|E(azi)|2 / |E(tot)|2 ≈55% ± 5% for λ0 = 1550 nm), respectively subwavelength confined (FWHM ≈450 nm ≈λ0/3.5) magnetic fields, are generated for a certain tip aperture diameter (d = 1.4 μm). We attribute the generation of this field distribution in metal-coated fiber tips to symmetry breaking in the bend and subsequent plasmonic mode filtering in the truncated conical taper.