28 research outputs found
Magnifying superlens in the visible frequency range
In this communication we introduce a new design of the magnifying superlens
and demonstrate it in the experiment.Comment: 3pages, 1 figur
Light controlled photon tunneling
Recent measurements of photon tunneling through individual subwavelength
pinholes in a gold film covered with a layer of polydiacetylene (Phys. Rev.
Letters 88, 187402 (2002)) provided strong indication of "photon blockade"
effect similar to Coulomb blockade phenomenon observed in single-electron
tunneling experiments. Here we report first observation of photon tunneling
been blocked (gated) by light at a different wavelength. This observation
suggests possibility of building new class of photon tunneling gating devices
for all-optical signal processing.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figure
Far-field optical microscope with nanometer-scale resolution based on in-plane surface plasmon imaging
A new far-field optical microscopy technique capable of reaching
nanometer-scale resolution has been developed recently using the in-plane image
magnification by surface plasmon polaritons. This microscopy is based on the
optical properties of a metal-dielectric interface that may, in principle,
provide extremely large values of the effective refractive index n up to
100-1000 as seen by the surface plasmons. Thus, the theoretical diffraction
limit on resolution becomes lambda/2n, and falls into the nanometer-scale
range. The experimental realization of the microscope has demonstrated the
optical resolution better than 50 nm for 502 nm illumination wavelength.
However, the theory of such surface plasmon-based far-field microscope
presented so far gives an oversimplified picture of its operation. For example,
the imaginary part of the metal dielectric constant severely limits the
surface-plasmon propagation and the shortest attainable wavelength in most
cases, which in turn limits the microscope magnification. Here I describe how
this limitation has been overcome in the experiment, and analyze the practical
limits on the surface plasmon microscope resolution. In addition, I present
more experimental results, which strongly support the conclusion of extremely
high spatial resolution of the surface plasmon microscope.Comment: 23 pages, 9 figures, will be published in the topical issue on
Nanostructured Optical Metamaterials of the Journal of Optics A: Pure and
Applied Optics, Manuscript revised in response to referees comment
Electromagnetic cloaking in the visible frequency range
Electromagnetic metamaterials provide unprecedented freedom and flexibility
to introduce new devices, which control electromagnetic wave propagation in
very unusual ways. Very recently theoretical design of an "invisibility cloak"
has been suggested, which has been realized at microwave frequencies in a
two-dimensional cylindrical geometry. In this communication we report on the
experimental realization of the dielectric permittivity distribution required
for non-magnetic cloaking in the visible frequency range.Comment: 3 pages, 1 figur
Surface plasmon toy-model of a rotating black hole
Recently introduced surface plasmon toy black hole model has been extended in
order to emulate a rotating black hole (Kerr metric). Physical realization of
this model involves a droplet of an optically active liquid on the metal
surface which supports propagation of surface plasmons. Such droplets are shown
to exhibit giant optical activity in the frequency range near the surface
plasmon resonance of a metal-liquid interface.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
Immersion microscopy based on photonic crystal materials
Theoretical model of the enhanced optical resolution of the surface plasmon
immersion microscope is developed, which is based on the optics of surface
plasmon Bloch waves in the tightly bound approximation. It is shown that a
similar resolution enhancement may occur in a more general case of an immersion
microscope based on photonic crystal materials with either positive or negative
effective refractive index. Both signs of the effective refractive index have
been observed in our experiments with surface plasmon immersion microscope,
which is also shown to be capable of individual virus imaging.Comment: 23 pages, 10 figure
Surface plasmon dielectric waveguides
We demonstrate that surface plasmon polaritons can be guided by nanometer
scale dielectric waveguides. In a test experiment plasmons were coupled to a
curved 3 micrometer radius dielectric stripe, which was 200 nm wide and 138 nm
thick using a parabolic surface coupler. This experiment demonstrates that
using surface plasmon polaritons the scale of optoelectronic devices based on
dielectric waveguides can be shrunk by at least an order of magnitude.Comment: 10 pages, 3 fig
Optical control of photon tunneling through an array of nanometer scale cylindrical channels
We report first observation of photon tunneling gated by light at a different
wavelength in an artificially created array of nanometer scale cylindrical
channels in a thick gold film. Polarization properties of gated light provide
strong proof of the enhanced nonlinear optical mixing in nanometric channels
involved in the process. This suggests the possibility of building a new class
of "gated" photon tunneling devices for massive parallel all-optical signal and
image processing.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
Far-field optical microscope with nanometer-scale resolution
The resolution of far-field optical microscopes, which rely on propagating
optical modes, is widely believed to be limited because of diffraction to a
value on the order of a half-wavelength of the light used.
Although immersion microscopes have slightly improved resolution on the order
of , the increased resolution is limited by the small range of
refractive indices n of available transparent materials. Here we demonstrate a
new far-field optical microscope design, which is capable of reaching
nanometer-scale resolution. This microscope uses the fact that the effective
refractive index of a planar dielectric lens or mirror placed on a
metal surface may reach extremely large values, up to , as seen by
propagating surface optical modes (plasmons). In our design a magnified planar
image produced originally by surface plasmons in the metal plane is viewed by a
regular microscope. Thus, the theoretical diffraction limit on resolution is
pushed down to nanometer-scale values. Used in reverse,
such a microscope may become an optical lithography tool with nanometer-scale
spatial resolution.Comment: Submitted to Phys.Rev.Letters, 14 pages, 4 figure