Femtosecond Imaging of Surface Plasmon Dynamics

by Atsushi Kubo et al.

SPIE Nanotechnology E-Newsletter, December 2005

Light interacting with nanostructured metals excites collective charge-density fluctuations known as surface plasmons (SP). Through excitation of SP eigenmodes, incident light is trapped on nanometer spatial and femtosecond temporal scales and its field is enhanced. Excitation of SP resonances leads to extraordinary physical phenomena including the anomalous transmission of light through sub-wavelength aperture arrays and the enhancement of nonlinear optical processes. Recently, the prospect of plasmonic devices has stimulated considerable effort to understand the fundamental dynamics of SPs and to develop practical applications such as ultra-sensitive chemical sensors and sub-wavelength optics. Read more