Plasmon optics of structured silver films

Optical near-fields of triangular nanostructures

“…To achieve this goal different types of nanoantennas have been proposed and examined during the last years [1][2][3][4][5][6]. For a further improvement of the efficiency of these nanoantennas progress has to be made on both sides, the theoretical description of these nanoantennas and the imaging of the near-fields with highest resolution [6][7][8][9][10]. The SNOM (scanning optical near-field microscopy) is an instrument used frequently, but alternative imaging methods have been developed as well which do not involve the problem of interaction of the SNOMtip with the optical near-field [11][12][13][14][15][16].…”

Nanostructure-Mediated Launching and Detection of 2D Surface Plasmons

“…Standard approaches for SPP excitation such as prism coupling in a Kretschmann geometry, the use of periodic structures such as gratings and arrays, or the recently reported use of four-wave mixing, typically result in unidirectional launching of surface plasmons. [9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16] Unlike these approaches, nanopartic1e-based SPP launching is local to the nanopartic1e site, easily directed by rotation of the incident light polarization, and can be either unidirectional or bidirectional, depending on the relative position of the laser focus with respect to the nanopartic1e antenna. Further development of these types of highly compact nanopartic1e-film transmitters and receivers may lead to new methods for the coupling of optical signals to on-chip networks capable of performing logic or computational functions, then transmit the outcome off-chip, back into free space.…”

“…[8,9] Due to the momentum mismatch between photons and plasmons, surface plasmons cannot be directly excited on smooth metallic films. [10] Prism-coupling techniques, [10,11] near-field probes or light sources, [9,12,13] fast electron excitation, [14] four-wave mixing, [15] gratings, [16] and individual nanoholes [17] patterned on the surface of metallic films, have all been used to excite surface plasmon-polaritons (SPP) in extended structures. In general, these methods may require additional optical devices or fabrication steps.…”

Plasmonic circuits for manipulating optical information

“…However, plasmons radiate at discontinuities such as ridges or pits in the surface or abrupt changes in the dielectric, and likewise, light incident on these discontinuities can excite surface plasmons ( Figure 2C). These discontinuities can also reflect and scatter plasmons [20,21].…”