204 research outputs found

    Dynamics of fingering convection I: Small-scale fluxes and large-scale instabilities

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    Double-diffusive instabilities are often invoked to explain enhanced transport in stably-stratified fluids. The most-studied natural manifestation of this process, fingering convection, commonly occurs in the ocean's thermocline and typically increases diapycnal mixing by two orders of magnitude over molecular diffusion. Fingering convection is also often associated with structures on much larger scales, such as thermohaline intrusions, gravity waves and thermohaline staircases. In this paper, we present an exhaustive study of the phenomenon from small to large scales. We perform the first three-dimensional simulations of the process at realistic values of the heat and salt diffusivities and provide accurate estimates of the induced turbulent transport. Our results are consistent with oceanic field measurements of diapycnal mixing in fingering regions. We then develop a generalized mean-field theory to study the stability of fingering systems to large-scale perturbations, using our calculated turbulent fluxes to parameterize small-scale transport. The theory recovers the intrusive instability, the collective instability, and the gamma-instability as limiting cases. We find that the fastest-growing large-scale mode depends sensitively on the ratio of the background gradients of temperature and salinity (the density ratio). While only intrusive modes exist at high density ratios, the collective and gamma-instabilities dominate the system at the low density ratios where staircases are typically observed. We conclude by discussing our findings in the context of staircase formation theory.Comment: 23 pages, 9 figures, submitted to JF

    Dynamics of fingering convection II: The formation of thermohaline staircases

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    Regions of the ocean's thermocline unstable to salt fingering are often observed to host thermohaline staircases, stacks of deep well-mixed convective layers separated by thin stably-stratified interfaces. Decades after their discovery, however, their origin remains controversial. In this paper we use 3D direct numerical simulations to shed light on the problem. We study the evolution of an analogous double-diffusive system, starting from an initial statistically homogeneous fingering state and find that it spontaneously transforms into a layered state. By analysing our results in the light of the mean-field theory developed in Paper I, a clear picture of the sequence of events resulting in the staircase formation emerges. A collective instability of homogeneous fingering convection first excites a field of gravity waves, with a well-defined vertical wavelength. However, the waves saturate early through regular but localized breaking events, and are not directly responsible for the formation of the staircase. Meanwhile, slower-growing, horizontally invariant but vertically quasi-periodic gamma-modes are also excited and grow according to the gamma-instability mechanism. Our results suggest that the nonlinear interaction between these various mean-field modes of instability leads to the selection of one particular gamma-mode as the staircase progenitor. Upon reaching a critical amplitude, this progenitor overturns into a fully-formed staircase. We conclude by extending the results of our simulations to real oceanic parameter values, and find that the progenitor gamma-mode is expected to grow on a timescale of a few hours, and leads to the formation of a thermohaline staircase in about one day with an initial spacing of the order of one to two metres.Comment: 18 pages, 9 figures, associated mpeg file at http://earth.uni-muenster.de/~stellma/movie_small.mp4, submitted to JF

    Coupling of individual quantum emitters to channel plasmons.

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    Efficient light-matter interaction lies at the heart of many emerging technologies that seek on-chip integration of solid-state photonic systems. Plasmonic waveguides, which guide the radiation in the form of strongly confined surface plasmon-polariton modes, represent a promising solution to manipulate single photons in coplanar architectures with unprecedented small footprints. Here we demonstrate coupling of the emission from a single quantum emitter to the channel plasmon polaritons supported by a V-groove plasmonic waveguide. Extensive theoretical simulations enable us to determine the position and orientation of the quantum emitter for optimum coupling. Concomitantly with these predictions, we demonstrate experimentally that 42% of a single nitrogen-vacancy centre emission efficiently couples into the supported modes of the V-groove. This work paves the way towards practical realization of efficient and long distance transfer of energy for integrated solid-state quantum systems.E.B.-U., R.M., M.G. and R.Q. acknowledge the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme (grant ERC- Plasmolight; no. 259196) and Fundació privada CELLEX. E.B.-U. acknowledges support of the FPI fellowship from the Spanish MICINN. R.M. acknowledges support of Marie Curie and NEST fellowships. C.G.-B. and F.J.G.-V. acknowledge the European Research Council (ERC-2011-AdG, Proposal No. 290981). C.G.-B., E.M., and F.J.G.-V. acknowledge the Spanish MINECO (Contract No. MAT2011-28581-C02-01). C.G.-B. acknowledges support of the FPU fellowship from the Spanish MECD. I.P.R., T.H. and S.I.B. acknowledge financial support for this work from the Danish Council for Independent Research (the FTP project ANAP, Contract No. 09-072949) and from the European Research Council, Grant No. 341054 (PLAQNAP). Y.A. acknowledges the support of RYC-2011-08471 fellowship from MICINN. We thank Luis Martin-Moreno and Cesar E. García for fruitful discussions, Jana M. Say and Louise J. Brown for providing the ND solution, and Ioannis Tsioutsios for support with the AFM manipulation technique.This is the final published version. It first appeared at http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/150807/ncomms8883/full/ncomms8883.html

    An Efficient Large-Area Grating Coupler for Surface Plasmon Polaritons

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    We report the design, fabrication and characterization of a periodic grating of shallow rectangular grooves in a metallic film with the goal of maximizing the coupling efficiency of an extended plane wave (PW) of visible or near-infrared light into a single surface plasmon polariton (SPP) mode on a flat metal surface. A PW-to-SPP power conversion factor > 45 % is demonstrated at a wavelength of 780 nm, which exceeds by an order of magnitude the experimental performance of SPP grating couplers reported to date at any wavelength. Conversion efficiency is maximized by matching the dissipative SPP losses along the grating surface to the local coupling strength. This critical coupling condition is experimentally achieved by tailoring the groove depth and width using a focused ion beam.Comment: The final publication is available at http://www.springerlink.com. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11468-011-9303-

    Plasmonic metasurfaces for waveguiding and field enhancement

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    The explosive progress in nanoscience has led to uncovering and exploring numerous physical phenomena occurring at nanoscale, especially when metal nanostructures are involved so that optical fields and electronic oscillations can be resonantly coupled. The latter is the subject of (nano) plasmonics with implications extending from subwavelength waveguiding to localized field enhancements. In this review paper, we consider making use of various phenomena related to multiple scattering of surface plasmons (SPs) at periodically and randomly (nano) structured metal surfaces. After reviewing the SP waveguiding along channels in nanostructured areas exhibiting band-gap and localization effects, SP-driven field enhancement in random structures and plasmonic fractal drums is discussed in detail. SP manipulation and waveguiding using periodic nanostructures on the long-wavelength side of the band gap is also considered. © 2009 by WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co.KGaA, Weinheim

    Efficient unidirectional nanoslit couplers for surface plasmons

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    Plasmonics is based on surface plasmon polariton (SPP) modes which can be laterally confined below the diffraction limit, thereby enabling ultracompact optical components. In order to exploit this potential, the fundamental bottleneck of poor light-SPP coupling must be overcome. In established SPP sources (using prism, grating} or nanodefect coupling) incident light is a source of noise for the SPP, unless the illumination occurs away from the region of interest, increasing the system size and weakening the SPP intensity. Back-side illumination of subwavelength apertures in optically thick metal films eliminates this problem but does not ensure a unique propagation direction for the SPP. We propose a novel back-side slit-illumination method based on drilling a periodic array of indentations at one side of the slit. We demonstrate that the SPP running in the array direction can be suppressed, and the one propagating in the opposite direction enhanced, providing localized unidirectional SPP launching.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figure

    Surface Plasmon Polariton Excitation in Metallic Layer Via Surface Relief Gratings in Photoactive Polymer Studied by the Finite-Difference Time-Domain Method

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    We performed numerical investigations of surface plasmon excitation and propagation in structures made of a photochromic polymer layer deposited over a metal surface using the finite-difference time-domain method. We investigated the process of light coupling into surface plasmon polariton excitation using surface relief gratings formed on the top of a polymer layer and compared it with the coupling via rectangular ridges grating made directly in the metal layer. We also performed preliminary studies on the influence of refractive index change of photochromic polymer on surface plasmon polariton propagation conditions
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