Plasmonic Antennas as Design Elements for Coherent Ultrafast Nanophotonics

Titelangaben

Brinks, Daan ; Castro-Lopez, Marta ; Hildner, Richard ; van Hulst, Niek F.:
Plasmonic Antennas as Design Elements for Coherent Ultrafast Nanophotonics.
In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. Bd. 110 (2013) Heft 46 . - S. 18386-18390.
ISSN 1091-6490
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1308652110

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Abstract

Broadband excitation of plasmons allows control of light-matter interaction with nanometric precision at femtosecond timescales. Research in the field has spiked in the past decade in an effort to turn ultrafast plasmonics into a diagnostic, microscopy, computa- tional, and engineering tool for this novel nanometric–femtosec- ond regime. Despite great developments, this goal has yet to materialize. Previous work failed to provide the ability to engineer and control the ultrafast response of a plasmonic system at will, needed to fully realize the potential of ultrafast nanophotonics in physical, biological, and chemical applications. Here, we perform systematic measurements of the coherent response of plasmonic nanoantennas at femtosecond timescales and use them as build- ing blocks in ultrafast plasmonic structures. We determine the co- herent response of individual nanoantennas to femtosecond excitation. By mixing localized resonances of characterized an- tennas, we design coupled plasmonic structures to achieve well- definedultrafast and phase-stablefield dynamics in a predetermined nanoscale hotspot.We present two examples of the application of such structures: control of the spectral amplitude and phase of a pulse in the near field, and ultrafast switching of mutually coherent hotspots. This simple, reproducible and scalable ap- proach transforms ultrafast plasmonics into a straightforward tool for use in fields as diverse as room temperature quantum optics, nanoscale solid-state physics, and quantum biology.