Top-down fabrication of plasmonic nanostructures for deterministic coupling to single quantum emitters

Metal nanostructures can be used to harvest and guide the emission of single photon emitters on-chip via surface plasmon polaritons. In order to develop and characterize photonic devices based on emitter-plasmon hybrid structures, a deterministic and scalable fabrication method for such structures is desirable. Here, we demonstrate deterministic...

Enhanced terahertz emission from thin film semiconductor/metal interfaces

Terahertz light is electromagnetic radiation, similar to visible light. The photons that the terahertz light is comprised of carry a much smaller amount of energy compared to the visible light photons. Unlike visible light, terahertz light can pass through materials like plastic, cardboards, wood etc.; a very useful property which enables it to...

Surface plasmon-enhanced terahertz emission from a hemicyanine self-assembled monolayer

Emission of terahertz radiation is observed when surface plasmons are excited on a thin film of gold, in the Kretschmann geometry. When a hemicyanine-terminated alkanethiol self-assembled monolayer of thickness 1.2 nm is deposited on the gold film, stronger terahertz emission is observed. Our experimental results confirm that enhanced terahertz...

A subwavelength slit as a quarter-wave retarder

We have experimentally studied the polarization-dependent transmission properties of a nanoslit in a gold film as a function of its width. The slit exhibits strong birefringence and dichroism. We find, surprisingly, that the transmission of the polarization parallel to the slit only disappears when the slit is much narrower than half a...

Fiber optic Surface Plasmon Resonance sensor based on wavelength modulation for hydrogen sensing

A new design of a fiber optic Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) sensor using Palladium as a sensitive layer for hydrogen detection is presented. In this approach, a transducer layer is deposited on the outside of a multimode fiber, after removing the optical cladding. The transducer layer is a multilayer stack made of a Silver, a Silica and a...

Percolation-enhanced generation of terahertz pulses by optical rectification on ultrathin gold films

Emission of pulses of electromagnetic radiation in the terahertz range is observed when ultrathin gold films on glass are illuminated with femtosecond near-IR laser pulses. A distinct maximum is observed in the emitted terahertz amplitude from films of average thickness just above the percolation threshold. Our measurements suggest that the...

Bouncing surface plasmons

Employing an interferometric cavity ring-down technique we study the launching, propagation and reflection of surface plasmons on a smooth gold-air interface that is intersected by two parallel, subwavelength wide slits. Inside the low-finesse optical cavity defined by these slits the surface plasmon is observed to make multiple bounces. Our...

On the phase of plasmons excited by slits in a metal film

The excitation of surface plasmons by subwavelength slits in metal films is studied using a rigorous diffraction model. It is shown that the plasmon is launched by a slit in antiphase with the incident magnetic field. This is true independent of slit width and of the metal used. Using this phase information, maxima and minima in transmission are...

Measuring the wavelength-dependent divergence of transmission through sub-wavelength hole-arrays by spectral imaging

We present a study on the far-field patterns of light transmitted through sub-wavelength metallic hole-arrays. Spectral imaging measurements are used here on hole arrays for the first time. It provides both spatial and spectral information of the transmission in far-field. The visibility of the images, measured in two illumination modes: Köhler...

Frequency-dependent radiation patterns emitted by THz plasmons on finite length cylindrical metal wires

We report on the emission patterns from THz plasmons propagating towards the end of cylindrical metal waveguides. Such waveguides exhibit low loss and dispersion, but little is known about the dynamics of the terahertz radiation at the end of the waveguide, specifically in the near- and intermediate-field. Our experimental results and numerical...

Effect of a dielectric coating on terahertz surface plasmon polaritons on metal wires

The authors present measurements and calculations on the effect of thin dielectric coatings on the propagation of terahertz pulses along the surface of metal wires. Our measurements show that propagation over only a few centimeters of wire having a thin dielectric coating, strongly distorts the terahertz pulse, which results in a several tens of...

Gold nanoparticles: A novel application of spectral imaging in proteomics - preliminary results

The intense research in proteomics is demanding for fast, reliable and easy-to-use methods in order to study the proteome. In this proceeding we report the development of such a novel research tool based on spectral imaging and Resonance Light Scattering gold particles. This method will allow the study of DNA-protein interactions. We suggest a...

Polarization tomography of metallic nanohole arrays

We report polarization tomography experiments on metallic nanohole arrays with square and hexagonal symmetry. As a main result we find that a fully polarized input beam is partly depolarized after transmission through a nanohole array. This loss of polarization coherence is found to be anisotropic; i.e., it depends on the polarization state of...

Toward the development of a Three-Dimensional Mid–Field Microscope

Recently, an extraordinary transmission of light through small holes (<200 nm) in a thin metallic film has been described. This phenomenon has been shown to be the result of the photon-plasmon interaction in thin films where a periodic structure (such as a set of holes) is embedded in the film. One of the extraordinary results is that the beam...