Tapered Yagi-Uda Nanoantennas for Broadband Unidirectional Emission

We demonstrate experimentally the operation of tapered Yagi-Uda nanoantennas for broadband unidirectional emission enhancement. The measured transmittance spectra show that, in comparison to untapered reference structures, the tapered nanoantennas exhibit distinct wide-band spectral resonances. The performed full-vectorial numerical calculations are in good qualitative agreement with the measured spectra, further revealing how the near-field profiles of the tapered nanoantennas are directly reflecting their broadband characteristics

Cascaded four-wave mixing in tapered plasmonic nanoantenna

We study theoretically the cascaded four-wave mixing (FWM) in broadband tapered plasmonic nanoantennas and demonstrate a 300-fold increase in nonlinear frequency conversion detected in the main lobe of the nanoantenna far-field pattern. This is achieved by tuning the elements of the nanoantenna to resonate frequencies involved into the FWM interaction. Our findings have a potentially broad application in ultrafast nonlinear spectroscopy, sensing, on-chip optical frequency conversion, nonlinear optical metamaterials and photon sources

Broadband light coupling to dielectric slot waveguides with tapered plasmonic nanoantennas

We propose and theoretically verify an efficient mechanism of broadband coupling between incident light and on-chip dielectric slot waveguide by employing a tapered plasmonic nanoantenna. Nanoantenna receives free space radiation and couples it to a dielectric slot waveguide with the efficiency of up to 20% in a broad spectral range, having a small footprint as compared with the currently used narrowband dielectric grating couplers. We argue that the frequency selective properties of such nanoantennas also allow for using them as ultrasmall on-chip multiplexer/demultiplexer devices

Energy level dynamics across the many-body localization transition

The level dynamics across the many body localization transition is examined for XXZ-spin model with a random magnetic field. We compare different scenaria of parameter dependent motion in the system and consider measures such as level velocities, curvatures as well as their fidelity susceptibilities. Studying the ergodic phase of the model we find that the level dynamics does not reveal the commonly believed universal behavior after rescaling the curvatures by the level velocity variance. At the same time, distributions of level curvatures and fidelity susceptibilities coincide with properly rescaled distributions for Gaussian Orthogonal Ensemble of random matrices. Profound differences exists depending on way the level dynamics is imposed in the many-body localized phase of the model in which the level dynamics can be understood with the help of local integrals of motion.Comment: version close to that accepted in PR

Tuneable plasmonics enabled by capillary oscillations of liquid-metal nanodroplets

Plasmonics allows manipulating light at the nanoscale, but has limitations due to the static nature of nanostructures and lack of tuneability. We propose and theoretically analyse a room-temperature liquid-metal nanodroplet that changes its shape, and therefore tunes the plasmon resonance frequency, due to capillary oscillations. We show the possibility to tune the capillary oscillation frequency of the nanodroplet and to drive the oscillations electrically or mechanically. Employed as a tuneable nanoantenna, the nanodroplet may find applications in sensors, imaging, microscopy, and medicine