Unusual polarization patterns in flat epitaxial ferroelectric nanoparticles

Interest in epitaxial ferroelectric nanoislands was growing rapidly in recent years driven by their potential for devices, especially ultradense memories. Recent advances in the "bottom- up" (self-assembly) nanometer scale techniques have opened up the opportunities of fabricating high-quality epitaxial ferroelectric nanoislands with extremely small thickness and lateral size on the order of 1 nm and 20 nm, respectively. On the other hand, recent emergence of powerful probes, such as piezoresponse force microscopy (PFM), has enabled imaging of a local domain structure with sub-10 nm resolution. In spite of those developments, a clear understanding of the polarization patterns in epitaxial ferroelectric nanoislands is lacking, and some important characteristics, like a critical lateral size for ferroelectricity, are not yet established. Here, we perform ab-initio studies of non-electroded epitaxial Pb(Zr0.5Ti0.5)O3 and BaTiO3 nanoislands and show the existence of novel polarization patterns driven by the misfit strains and/or anisotropy energy. The results allow interpretation of the data and design of the ferroelectric nanostructures with tailored response to external field.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figure

Modulation of Negative Index Metamaterials in the Near-IR Range

Optical modulation of the effective refractive properties of a "fishnet" metamaterial with a Ag/Si/Ag heterostructure is demonstrated in the near-IR range and the associated fast dynamics of negative refractive index is studied by pump-probe method. Photo excitation of the amorphous Si layer at visible wavelength and corresponding modification of its optical parameters is found to be responsible for the observed modulation of negative refractive index in near-IR.Comment: 11 figures, 4 figure

Plasmonic resonances and hot spots in Ag octopods

New type of plasmonic nanoparticles - silver octopods that can be synthesized with a variety of shapes - have been demonstrated to show versatile optical response using the discrete dipole approximation. The octopods show a complex behavior at optical (visible, IR) wavelengths, with three major resonances that can be tuned up to a desired response that makes them especially attractive to use in e.g. high-performance surface enhanced Raman (SERS) detectors. The excited resonant modes strongly depend on the geometrical parameters of the stars, while dependence on their orientation with respect to an incident radiation is moderate, owing to cubic symmetry. The field "hot spots" are formed with the local field enhancement up to 50 times compared to an incident field. They are usually localized at the surface between the arms and may be both "electric" and "magnetic". While the former are of primary importance for SERS, the latter may be identified by trapping magnetic nanoparticles in their vicinity. The results are in very good agreement with the data where available and may be used as a type of a "shape spectroscopy" for the nanoparticles.Comment: 12 pages. 6 figure

Lattice-Induced Double-Valley Degeneracy Lifting in Magnetic Field in Graphene

We show that the recently discovered double-valley splitting of the low-lying Landau level(s) in the Quantum Hall Effect in graphene can be explained as perturbative orbital interaction of intra- and inter-valley microscopic orbital currents with a magnetic field. This effect is provided by the translational-non-invariant terms corresponding to graphene's crystallographic honeycomb symmetry but do not exist in the relativistic theory of massless Dirac Fermions in Quantum Electrodynamics. We discuss recent data in view of these results

Coupled-Mode Theory of Field Enhancement in Complex Metal Nanostructures

We describe a simple yet rigorous theoretical model capable of analytical estimation of plasmonic field enhancement in complex metal structures. We show that one can treat the complex structures as coupled multi-pole modes with highest enhancements obtained due to superposition of high order modes in small particles. The model allows one to optimize the structures for the largest possible field enhancements, which depends on the quality factor Q of the metal and can be as high as Q^2 for two spherical particles. The "hot spot" can occur either in the nano-gaps between the particles or near the smaller particles. We trace the optimum field enhancement mechanism to the fact that the extended dipole modes of larger particles act as the efficient antennas while the modes in the gaps or near the smaller particles act as the compact sub-wavelength cavities. We also show how easily our approach can be extended to incorporate large numbers of particles in intricate arrangements.Comment: 23 pages, 7 figure

Ultrafast modulation of optical metamaterials

We show by pump-probe spectroscopy that the optical response of a fishnet metamaterial can be modulated on the femtosecond time scale. The modulation dynamics is dominated by pump-induced changes in the constituting dielectric medium, but the strength of modulation is dramatically enhanced through the plasmon resonance. The pump-induced spectral responses of the metamaterial provide understanding on how the resonance is modified by pump excitation. Our study suggests that metamaterials can be used as high-speed amplitude/phase modulators with terahertz-bandwidth