KEYWORDS: Near field optics, Optical imaging, Signal to noise ratio, Visible radiation, Spectroscopy, Scanning electron microscopy, Near field, Nanoimaging, Electron microscopes, Atomic force microscopy
KEYWORDS: Near field scanning optical microscopy, Near field, Photodetectors, Wavefronts, Super resolution, Polarization, Photonic nanostructures, Phase shift keying, Nanostructures, Tomography
Kerr frequency combs have been attracting significant interest due to their rich physics and broad applications in metrology, microwave photonics, and telecommunications. In this review, we first introduce the fundamental physics, master equations, simulation methods, and dynamic process of Kerr frequency combs. We then analyze the most promising material platform for realizing Kerr frequency combs—silicon nitride on insulator (SNOI) in comparison with other material platforms. Moreover, we discuss the fabrication methods, process optimization as well as tuning and measurement schemes of SNOI-based Kerr frequency combs. Furthermore, we highlight several emerging applications of Kerr frequency combs in metrology, including spectroscopy, ranging, and timing. Finally, we summarize this review and envision the future development of chip-scale Kerr frequency combs from the viewpoint of theory, material platforms, and tuning methods.
KEYWORDS: Nonlinear optics, Near field, Nanostructures, Near field optics, Near field scanning optical microscopy, Nanophotonics, Electroluminescent displays, Wavefronts, Visualization, Third-harmonic generation
Photonic spin-orbit interaction has attracted much attention in recent years. This talk first reports the efficient generation of ultra-compact optical vortex (OV) in achiral nanostructures, which has a radius of only 1 μm and possesses a signal-to-noise ratio larger than 6 dB. A spin-selective and phase-resolved scanning near-field optical microscope (SNOM) is employed to probe and visualize the OV generation process in the spin basis. Furthermore, a SNOM system is developed for probing and analyzing nonlinear optical signals in nanostructures with subwavelength resolution, which images the near-field third-harmonic generation from an anapole dark-mode state in a silicon nanodisk.
Weak intensity, low emission rate and poor emission directionality are three main challenges of quantum emitters. Here, we report on realizing enhanced photon emission from quantum dots mediated by plasmonic hybrid nanoantennas. Firstly, a plasmonic hybrid structure is proposed, where a silver nanocube is positioned at the center of a metallic concentric-ring structure, to simultaneously enhance the emission directionality and the decay rate of quantum dots embedded in the vertical nanogap while maintaining a high quantum efficiency. Secondly, a crystalline spherical silicon nanoparticle on metal nanoantenna is realized that can largely enhance the spontaneous emission intensity and the emission decay rate. A high quantum efficiency of over 80% is obtained. These hybrid nanoantennas can be combined with various nanoscale optical emitters and easily extended to form large area light-emitting devices for applications such as advanced display and wireless optical communication.
Metasurfaces provide great feasibilities for tailoring both propagation waves and surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs). Manipulation of SPPs with arbitrary complex field distribution is an important issue in integrated nanophotonics due to their capability of guiding waves with subwavelength footprint. Here, with metasurface composed of nano aperture arrays, a novel approach is proposed and experimentally demonstrated which can effectively manipulate complex amplitude of SPPs in the near-field regime. Positioning the azimuthal angles of nano aperture arrays and simultaneously tuning their geometric parameters, the phase and amplitude are controlled based on Pancharatnam-Berry phases and their individual transmission coefficients. For the verification of the proposed design, Airy plasmons and axisymmetric Airy beams are generated. The results of numerical simulations and near-field imaging are well consistent with each other. Besides, 2D dipole analysis is also applied for efficient simulations. This strategy of complex amplitude manipulation with metasurface can be used for potential applications in plasmonic beam shaping, integrated optoelectronic systems and surface wave holography.
KEYWORDS: Spiral phase plates, Near field scanning optical microscopy, Surface plasmon polaritons, Near field optics, Inspection, Photonic integrated circuits, Plasmonics, Wavefronts, Wave propagation, Gold, Nanoantennas, Near field scanning optical microscopy, Plasmonics, Beam propagation method, Near field
The beam formation of SPPs is very important in plasmonics. Different SPP beams could be used for different purposes, such as SPP focusing, non-diffractive SPP wave propagation, efficient SPP coupling, and manipulating particles. Here, we present a straightforward and effective method for generating unidirectionally propagating SPP beams with arbitrary profile in both amplitude and phase by locating the Δ-shaped nanoantennas. The Δ-shape of the nanoantennas is used to achieve unidirectionality of SPPs and the locations of the nanoantennas are controlled to realize arbitrary profile of the excited SPP wave. As examples, several SPP launchers generating different SPP beams are designed with this method. The near-field distribution of the generated SPP beams are also experimentally characterized to validate the effectiveness of this method.
Metal nanoparticles (NPs) have wide applications in various fields due to their unique properties. The accurate and fast characterization of metal NP concentration is highly demanded in the synthesis, metrology, and applications of NPs. The commonly used inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) is a standard method for measuring the mass concentration (MC) of NPs, even though it is time-consuming, expensive, and destructive. While for the number concentration (NC) characterization of NPs, the method is less explored. Here, we present an improved optical extinction-scattering spectroscopic method for the fast, non-destructive characterization of the MC and NC of poly-disperse metal NP colloid simultaneously. By measuring the extinction spectrum and the 90° scattering spectrum of the nanorod (NR) colloid, we can solve an inverse scattering problem to retrieve the two dimensional joint probability density function (2D-JPDF) with respect to the width and the aspect ratio of NR sample accurately, based on which the NC and MC of the colloidal NPs can be calculated. This method is powerful to characterize both the geometric parameters and the concentrations, including the MC and NC, of poly-disperse metal NPs simultaneously. It is very useful for the non-destructive, non-contact, and in-situ comprehensive measurement of colloidal NPs. This method also has the potential to characterize NPs of other shapes or made of other materials.
Plasmonic nanostructures with strong near field “hot spots” are highly demanded in many applications such as surface
enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS). Here, we present some specially designed plasmonic hierarchical nanostructures
that combine geometric features of micro- and nanoscales. Owing to the mode coupling and hybridization in these multiscale
systems that can produce the cascaded field enhancement (CFE) effect, extremely strong and highly confined field
hot spots can be readily generated in nanoscale volumes. Two typical hierarchical nanostructures are presented: an Mshaped
grating with 30 nm narrow V-shaped grooves and a nanoparticle-in-cavity (PIC) plasmonic nanoantenna array. A
cost-effective, efficient and reliable fabrication technique based on room-temperature nanoimprinting and anisotropic
reactive ion etching is developed to fabricate these plasmonic hierarchical nanostructures in large area, during which the
nano-features can be finely controlled and tuned. The field distributions and enhancement in the proposed structures are
experimentally characterized, which agree very well with the numerical simulations. SERS experiments show the SERS
enhancement factor as high as 5×108 by employing these hierarchical nanostructures as SERS substrates, which verify
the strong light-matter interaction and show the great potential of these devices as low-cost and highly-active substrates
for SERS applications.
The emerging field of metasurfaces has offered unprecedented functionalities for shaping wave fronts and optical responses. Here, we realize a new class of metasurfaces with nanorod array, which can generate abrupt interfacial phase changes to control local wave front at subwavelength scale. The physical mechanism under the phase modulation is geometry phase in essence, thus can achieve broadband operation, as well as helicity-dependent property. Multiple applications have been demonstrated, such as anomalous refraction, ultrathin dual-polarity metalenses, helicitydependent unidirectional surface plasmon polariton (SPP) excitation, and three-dimensional (3D) holography.
We investigate the design of binary grating structures, e.g. resonance waveguide filters (RWFs), with
subwavelength feature sizes, taking the temperature dependence of different material parameters into account. Our final
goal is to demonstrate devices with athermal operation. We design the binary grating structures to be made in polymer
substrates, such as polycarbonate (PC), due to their potential for low cost, mass fabrication. The high thermal expansion
coefficient (TEC) of polymers, compared to inorganic optical materials, enhances the thermal sensitivity of the grating
structures. The gratings are designed using Fourier Model Method (FMM) by considering both thermal expansion and
thermo-optic effects on the resonance wavelength shift. The fabrication of RWF structures is proposed by e-beam
lithography, creating a master stamp and copying the structures into a polymer substrate by some replication techniques,
followed by an ALD deposition of TiO2. When the resonance waveguide grating RWG is designed for nearly room
temperature operation at a peak wavelength of 633 nm with a full width half maximum FWHM of 3 nm (TM mode
reflectance), the peak wavelength shifts 0.2 nm /50C when only the TEC is taken into account. However, taking into
account also the thermo-optic coefficients TOCs of PC and TiO2, the peak position shifts to 0.4 nm/ 50C on the opposite
side of spectral central wavelength. Thus the overall shift reduces to 0.2 nm /5 0C, illustrating partial athermalization. It
was also observed that thermo-optic coefficient TOC contributed more significantly than TEC effect. The wavelengths
shift was almost linear with respect to temperature for both effects and showed slopes of 0.0673, 0.0422 and 0.02352 for
TOC, TEC and combined effects, respectively.
When a linearly polarized light wave propagates in a chiral medium, the polarization plane azimuth rotates
clockwise or counter-clockwise depending on the handedness of the material. This effect is called optical activity.
It can be observed in a number of crystals and organic liquids, however the rotatory power of chiral materials
available in nature is useally very small. That is why chiral planar micro- or nano-structures, which possess a
much stronger rotatory power than natural chrial media, have attracted a considerable attention in recent years.
We demonstrate large optical activity of chiral subwavelength gratings having no in-plane mirror symmetry and
fabricated with metal thin films. For zeroth-order transmitted light, the chirality of these gratings manifests itself
in the non-coplanarity of the electric field vectors at the air- and substrate-sides of the metal layer and can be
interpreted in terms of the surface pllasmon enhanced non-local
light-matter interaction. We demonstrate also
that in all-dielectric subwavelength chiral gratings, the optical activity can be enhanced even stronger by using
waveguide resonance. In the terahertz (THz) region, we obtain rotation of the polarization zimuth of a linearly
polarized THz wave by using double-layered metal chiral structure with complimentary patterns.
Nanogratings with chiral geometry are found to produce artificial optical activity (i.e., the ability of rotating the light
polarization), though the composing materials are not optical active. This paper presents a thorough review of our recent
study, from theory to experiment, on the optical activity in two types of chiral nanogratings: the dielectric gratings
exhibiting the largest polarization rotation (up to 26.5°) observed to date, and the metallic ones producing simultaneous
enhance transmission and enhanced optical activity. The polarization properties of the chiral gratings are demonstrated
and the enhancement mechanism of optical activity due to various resonance processes are also revealed and interpreted.
We show that local fields associated both with overall structural features and with unintended defects can be important in
the second-order nonlinear response of metal nanostructures. We first consider noncentrosymmetric T-shaped gold
nanodimers with nanogaps of varying size. The reflection symmetry of the T-shape is broken by a small slant in the
mutual orientations of the horizontal and vertical bars, which makes the sample chiral and gives rise to a different
nonlinear response for left- and right-hand circularly-polarized fundamental light. Measurements of achiral and chiral
second-harmonic signals as well as the circular-difference response exhibit a nontrivial dependence on the gap size. All
results are explained by considering the distribution of the resonant fundamental field in the structure and its interaction
with the surface nonlinearity of the metal. We also prepared arrays of ideally centrosymmetric circular nanodots.
Second- and third-harmonic generation microscopies at normal incidence were used to address polarization-dependent
responses of individual dots. Both signals exhibit large differences between individual dots. This is expected for second-harmonic
generation, which must arise from symmetry-breaking defects. However, similar results for third-harmonic
generation suggest that both nonlinear responses are dominated by strongly localized fields at defects.
The mutual non-orthogonal orientations of its horizontal and vertical bars make T-shaped gold nanodimers chiral.
Because of the broken symmetry second-harmonic generation from the structure has different efficiencies for left- and
right-hand circularly-polarized fundamental light. The chiral signature arises from the coupling between the bars. One
would therefore assume that the chiral signature is largest when the gap size is very small, because then the coupling is
presumably the strongest. Counter-intuitively, the measurement results show a very small chiral signature for the
smallest gap. To explain the results, one needs to consider the distribution of the local field in the unit cell of the
structure.
We demonstrate both experimentally and computationally that SHG from arrays of T-shaped gold nanodimers with differing nanogap sizes results from asymmetry in the local field distribution rather than strict dependence on the nanogap size. Normal-incidence SHG measurements reveal that the SHG responses depend non-trivially
on the nanogap size. Calculations show that strong orthogonal polarization components, which are not present
in the exciting field, are induced, and that these induced components yield the dominant SHG response. The
calculations also reveal that field enhancement is roughly independent of nanogap size and persists even for
large nanogap sizes. A simple phenomenological model wherein the local surface susceptibility of the nanodimer interacts with the local field distribution along the nanodimer perimeter qualitatively explains the experimental results with good agreement.
Nanoscale variations in the local fields and material properties can enable higher-multipole (magnetic-dipole and
electric-quadrupole) contributions to the nonlinear response in addition to electric-dipole contributions. Moreover,
the local-field distribution in the structure is important to achieve favorable interaction with the locally varying
nonlinearity. Local-field enhancement is particularly important for nonlinear optical effects. Extremely
small features of a few nm, such as nanogaps between two particles, are expected to be particularly beneficial
for field localization and enhancement. Here, we provide evidence of multipole interference in polarized secondharmonic
generation from arrays of L-shaped gold nanoparticles. We also prepare T-shaped gold nanodimers
and vary the size of the nanogap between their vertical and horizontal bars. Surprisingly, the second-harmonic
signals do not decrease trivially with increasing gap size, because the gap region is nearly centrosymmetric,
thereby forbidding second-order effects. Instead, asymmetric local fundamental field distributions along the
dimer perimeter are favorable, in accordance with the symmetry rule.
Following a group-theoretic approach that we have developed recently, we reformulate the Fourier modal method for crossed gratings with C3 symmetry, i.e., grating structures that are invariant after rotations about the normal of the mean grating plane through angles n(2π/3). By exploiting the structural symmetry of the grating, a general diffraction problem can be decomposed into a linear combination of three symmetrical basis problems. Hence the total diffracted field can be obtained as a superposition of the solutions of three symmetry modes. It is shown theoretically and numerically that when the incident mounting and the truncation scheme make the truncated reciprocal lattice of the diffracted field also have the C3 symmetry, the number of unknowns in each symmetrical basis problem is cut by 2/3. Therefore, the maximum effective truncation number of the new algorithm is tripled and the total computation time is reduced by a factor of 9. For the case of normal incidence with arbitrary polarization, the reduction factor can be further increased to 27/2. A numerical example is provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the new formulation.
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