Boosting Molecular Fluorescence with a Plasmonic Nanolauncher

Ferrell–Berreman Modes in Plasmonic Epsilon-near-Zero Media

“…Waves propagating within ENZ media have a divergent phase velocity that can be used to guide light with zero phase advancement through sharp bends within sub-wavelength size channels [1,2], or to tailor the phase of radiation/luminescence within a prescribed ENZ structure [3,4]. The electric field intensity within an ENZ medium can be enhanced relative to that in free space leading to strong light absorption [5].…”

“…Keywords: plasmon resonance, epsilon-near-zero, metamaterials, plasmonics An important class of artificial media are the epsilon-near-zero (ENZ) metamaterials that are designed to have a vanishing dielectric permittivity | | → 0. Waves propagating within ENZ media have a divergent phase velocity that can be used to guide light with zero phase advancement through sharp bends within sub-wavelength size channels [1, 2], or to tailor the phase of radiation/luminescence within a prescribed ENZ structure [3,4]. The electric field intensity within an ENZ medium can be enhanced relative to that in free space leading to strong light absorption [5].…”

Enhanced third harmonic generation from the epsilon-near-zero modes of ultrathin films

“…Moreover, ENZ may be synthesized at virtually any frequency with properly designed metamaterials, using subwavelength arrangements of plasmonic resonators or using guided modes and operating near the cutoff frequency. Many optical effects and potential applications arising from ENZ behavior have been proposed or demonstrated including optical tunneling [14][15][16] , phase patterning 17 , directional emission 18 , perfect absorption 19,20 , dielectric sensing 21 , guided index lensing 22 , enhanced emission [23][24][25] , optical cloaking 26 , strong coupling phenomena [27][28][29] , optical modulation 30,31 , thermo-photovoltaics 32 , and enhanced optical nonlinearities [33][34][35] .…”

Wave–matter interactions in epsilon-and-mu-near-zero structures

“…However, a unique feature of such structure as compared with any other resonant system coupled to a radiating element or molecule is the nearly uniform phase distribution of that enhanced electric field along the channel, which is in principle independent of the channel length. This leads to the independence of the emission enhancement on the dipole's location within the channel 18,45 . In an EMNZ medium on the other hand, the supercoupling phenomenon is still preserved, however, without the need for ultranarrow subwavelength channels as was the case for ENZ media, which in addition to providing a larger platform to place the dipole within the medium, leads to no mandatory enhancement in the fields within the EMNZ region.…”

“…One track in which this category of metamaterials was utilized efficiently is the field of antenna design, where ENZ or EMNZ materials were considered for tailoring the radiation patterns, that is, to attain highly directive radiation patterns [6][7][8][9][10][11][12] , or for significantly enhancing the radiation efficiency [13][14][15] . On the other hand, near-zero-parameter materials have also been extensively studied and used as means to realize unconventional tunnelling of electromagnetic energy within ultrathin subwavelength ENZ channels or bends (a phenomenon coined as supercoupling) [16][17][18][19] , tunnelling through large volumes using MNZ structures (Marcos, J. S, Silveirinha, M. & Engheta, N., manuscript in preparation), and to overcome the problem of weak coupling between different electromagnetic components that are conventionally not well matched, for example, in a coaxial to waveguide transition 20 .…”