Dark Plasmon Research Articles

Excitation of dark multipolar plasmonic resonances at terahertz frequencies.

We experimentally observe the excitation of dark multipolar spoof localized surface plasmon resonances in a hybrid structure consisting of a corrugated metallic disk coupled with a C-shaped dipole resonator. The uncoupled corrugated metallic disk only supports a dipolar resonance in the transmission spectrum due to perfect symmetry of the structure. However, the dark multipolar spoof localized surface plasmon resonances emerge when coupled with a bright C-shaped resonator which is placed in the vicinity of the corrugated metallic disk. These excited multipolar resonances show minimum influence on the coupling distance between the C-shaped resonator and corrugated metallic disk. The resonance frequencies of the radiative modes are controlled by varying the angle of the C-shaped resonator and the inner disk radius, both of which play dominant roles in the excitation of the spoof localized surface plasmons. Observation of such a transition from the dark to radiative nature of multipolar spoof localized plasmon resonances would find potential applications in terahertz based resonant plasmonic and metamaterial devices.

Tunable dark plasmons in a metallic nanocube dimer: toward ultimate sensitivity nanoplasmonic sensors.

Metallic nanoparticles can function as label-free nanosensors monitoring the local dielectric environment in their close vicinity, thanks to the localized surface plasmon resonances. The sensing figure of merit is limited by the total loss rate of the plasmon. Here, we theoretically study a silver nanocube dimer and discover for the first time a dark plasmon with its total loss rate at the lower theoretical limit. It originates from the attractive coupling of the dipolar and quadrupolar mode in the individual nanocubes. It shows an unprecedented sensitivity to the interparticle gap distance, i.e., one ångström change in the gap distance results in a shift twice as large as the peak width. The sensing figure of merit using this dark plasmon is 56-61, reaching the ultimate value limited only by the material permittivity. The field of the mode is confined mainly within the gap region which is in the extreme deep subwavelength (3.5 × 10(-6)λ0(3)) region. Besides sensing applications, the dark plasmon also shows foreseeable potential in enhanced spectroscopy, nanolasers and other nanophotonic devices.

Dynamic control of polarization-inverted modes in three-dimensionally trapped multiple nanogaps

We propose a guiding principle for the dynamic control of polarization-inverted modes in multiple nanogaps for unconventional optical transitions of molecules at arbitrary three-dimensional spatial positions. Based on our developed self-consistent theory for the optical assembly of nanoparticles (NPs), we clarified that spherical silver NPs can be optically trapped and aligned in the light-propagating direction via longitudinally polarized light; they form a rod-like nano-composite with multiple nanogaps. During trapping, there is a possibility that an additional irradiation of linearly polarized far-field light may excite the bonding and anti-bonding dark plasmon modes with low radiative decay rate of several meV via cancellation of inverted polarization. Our finding reveals that not only the steep change in the enhanced intensity of light field but also the phase inversion of light field between the dynamically formed nanogaps will pave the way to the highly sensitive sensors for molecules, the unconventional chemical reactions, and so on.

Double Fano resonances in a planar pseudo-dolmen structure

The transmittance properties of a planar pseudo-dolmen plasmonic structure were investigated using finite element method. Numerical results show that double Fano resonances are caused by the strong electric field coupling between bright and dark modes. The dark plasmon resonances are highly dependent on the structure parameters of the pseudo-dolmen structure. The Fano resonances in the pseudo-dolmen structure are also sensitive to small changes in the refractive index of the surrounding media. This characteristic could be effectively used to fabricate bi-wavelength sensors.

Hybridized plasmon resonant modes in molecular metallodielectric quad-triangles nanoantenna

In this study, we examined the plasmon response for both metallic and metallodielectric nanoantennas composed of four gold (Au) triangles in a quadrumer orientation. Tailoring an artificial metallic quad-triangles nanoantenna, it is shown that the structure is able to support pronounced plasmon and Fano resonances in the visible spectrum. Using plasmon transmutation effect, we showed that the plasmonic response of the proposed cluster can be enhanced with the placement of carbon nanoparticles in the offset gaps between the proximal triangles. It is verified that this structural modification gives rise to formation of new collective magnetic antibonding (dark) plasmon modes. Excitation of these subradiant dark modes leads to formation of narrower and deeper Fano resonances in the spectral response of the metallodielectric nanoantenna. To investigate the practical applications of the metallodielectric structure, we immersed the nano-assembly in various liquids with different refractive indices to define its sensitivity to the environmental perturbation as a plasmonic biological sensor.

Enhancement of photothermal heat generation by metallodielectric nanoplasmonic clusters.

A four-member homogenous quadrumer composed of silver core-shell nanostructures is tailored to enhance photothermal heat generation efficiency in sub-nanosecond time scale. Calculating the plasmonic and photothermal responses of metallic cluster, we show that it is possible to achieve thermal heat flux generation of 64.7 μW.cm-2 and temperature changes in the range of ΔT = 150 K, using Fano resonant effect. Photothermal heat generation efficiency is even further enhanced by adding carbon nanospheres to the offset gap between particles and obtained thermal heat flux generation of 93.3 μW.cm-2 and temperature increase of ΔT = 172 K. It is also shown that placement of dielectric spheres gives rise to arise collective magnetic dark plasmon modes that improves the quality of the observed Fano resonances. The presented data attests the superior performance of the proposed metallodielectric structures to utilize in practical tumor and cancer therapies and drug delivery applications.

Fano-like resonances in split concentric nanoshell dimers in designing negative-index metamaterials for biological-chemical sensing and spectroscopic purposes.

In this study, we investigated numerically the plasmon response of a dimer configuration composed of a couple of split and concentric Au nanoshells in a complex orientation. We showed that an isolated composition of two concentric split nanoshells could be tailored to support strong plasmon resonant modes in the visible wavelengths. After determining the accurate geometric dimensions for the presented antisymmetric nanostructure, we designed a dimer array that shows complex behavior during exposure to different incident polarizations. We verified that the examined dimer was able to support destructive interference between dark and bright plasmon modes, which resulted in a pronounced Fano-like dip. Observation of a Fano minimum in such a simple molecular orientation of subwavelength particles opens new avenues for employing this structure in designing various practical plasmonic devices. Depositing the final dimer in a strong coupling condition on a semiconductor metasurface and measuring the effective refractive index at certain wavelengths, we demonstrate that each one of dimer units can be considered a meta-atom due to the high aspect ratio in the geometric parameters. Using this method, by extending the number of dimers periodically and illuminating the structure, we examined the isotropic, polarization-dependent, and transmission behavior of the metamaterial configuration. Using numerical methods and calculating the effective refractive indices, we computed and sketched corresponding figure of merit over the transmission window, where the maximum value obtained was 42.3 for Si and 54.6 for gallium phosphide (GaP) substrates.

Excitation of multipole plasmons by optical vortex beams.

Localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) has been shown to exhibit a strong potential for nanoscale electromagnetic field manipulation beyond the diffraction limit. Particularly dark mode plasmons circumvent radiation loss and store the energy long in time, which raise the prospect of interesting plasmonics applications, for example biochemical sensing and nanoscale lasing. Here we theoretically investigate a method of exciting multipole plasmons, including dark modes, using normally incident light. By performing numerical calculations, we show that multipole plasmons in metal nanodisks can be selectively excited by circularly-polarized optical vortex beams. We study the electromagnetic fields of the beam cross-sections and their correspondence with the excited multipole plasmon modes with respect to spin and orbital angular momenta. The transfer of angular momentum between photons and plasmons is also discussed.

Bright and dark plasmon resonances of nanoplasmonic antennas evanescently coupled with a silicon nitride waveguide

In this work we investigate numerically and experimentally the resonance wavelength tuning of different nanoplasmonic antennas excited through the evanescent field of a single mode silicon nitride waveguide and study their interaction with this excitation field. Experimental interaction efficiencies up to 19% are reported and it is shown that the waveguide geometry can be tuned in order to optimize this interaction. Apart from the excitation of bright plasmon modes, an efficient coupling between the evanescent field and a dark plasmonic resonance is experimentally demonstrated and theoretically explained as a result of the propagation induced phase delay.

Decay of dark and bright plasmonic modes in a metallic nanoparticle dimer

We develop a general quantum theory of the coupled plasmonic modes resulting from the near-field interaction between localized surface plasmons in a heterogeneous metallic nanoparticle dimer. In particular, we provide analytical expressions for the frequencies and decay rates of the bright and dark plasmonic modes. We show that, for sufficiently small nanoparticles, the main decay channel for the dark plasmonic mode, which is weakly coupled to light and, hence, immune to radiation damping, is of nonradiative origin and corresponds to Landau damping, i.e., decay into electron-hole pairs.

Tailoring the negative-refractive-index metamaterials composed of semiconductor-metal-semiconductor gold ring/disk cavity heptamers to support strong Fano resonances in the visible spectrum.

In this study, we investigated numerically the plasmon response of a planar negative-index metamaterial composed of symmetric molecular orientations of Au ring/disk nanocavities in a heptamer cluster. Using the plasmon hybridization theory and considering the optical response of an individual nanocluster, we determined the accurate geometrical sizes for a ring/disk nanocavity heptamer. It is shown that the proposed well-organized nanocluster can be tailored to support strong and sharp Fano resonances in the visible spectrum. Surrounding and filling the heptamer clusters by various metasurfaces with different chemical characteristics, and illuminating the structure with an incident light source, we proved that this configuration reflects low losses and isotropic features, including a pronounced Fano dip in the visible spectrum. Technically, employing numerical methods and tuning the geometrical sizes of the structure, we tuned and induced the Fano dip in the visible range, while the dark and bright plasmon resonance extremes are blueshifted to shorter wavelengths dramatically. Considering the calculated transmission window, we quantified the effective refractive index for the structure, while the substance of the substrate material was varied. Using Si, GaP, and InP semiconductors as substrate materials, we calculated and compared the corresponding figure of merit (FOM) for different regimes. The highest possible FOM was obtained for the GaP-Au-GaP negative-refractive-index metamaterial composed of ring/disk nanocavity heptamers as 62.4 at λ∼690 nm (arounnd the position of the Fano dip). Despite the outstanding symmetric nature of the suggested heptamer array, we provided sharp Fano dips by the appropriate tuning of the geometrical and chemical parameters. This study yields a method to employ ring/disk nanocavity heptamers as a negative-refractive-index metamaterial in designing highly accurate localization of surface plasmon resonance sensing devices and biochemical sensors.

Dichroism in the interaction between vortex electron beams, plasmons, and molecules.

We study the transfer of orbital angular momentum between vortex electron beams and chiral samples, such as staircase plasmonic nanostructures and biomolecules. Inelastic electron scattering from these samples produces large dichroism in the momentum-resolved electron energy-loss spectra. We illustrate this phenomenon with calculations for chiral and nonchiral clusters of silver spheres using both focused and extended electron beams, which exhibit ∼10% difference between channels of opposite angular momentum. In addition to its fundamental interest, this remarkably high dichroism suggests a way of spatially resolving chiral optical excitations, including dark plasmons. We also predict a dichroic response when probing a chiral biomolecule, which suggests the use of these electron beams for resolving different enantiomers.

Tunable phonon-induced transparency in bilayer graphene nanoribbons.

In the phenomenon of plasmon-induced transparency, which is a classical analogue of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) in atomic gases, the coherent interference between two plasmon modes results in an optical transparency window in a broad absorption spectrum. With the requirement of contrasting lifetimes, typically one of the plasmon modes involved is a dark mode that has limited coupling to the electromagnetic radiation and possesses relatively longer lifetime. Plasmon-induced transparency not only leads to light transmission at otherwise opaque frequency regions but also results in the slowing of light group velocity and enhanced optical nonlinearity. In this article, we report an analogous behavior, denoted as phonon-induced transparency (PIT), in AB-stacked bilayer graphene nanoribbons. Here, light absorption due to the plasmon excitation is suppressed in a narrow window due to the coupling with the infrared active Γ-point optical phonon, whose function here is similar to that of the dark plasmon mode in the plasmon-induced transparency. We further show that PIT in bilayer graphene is actively tunable by electrostatic gating and estimate a maximum slow light factor of around 500 at the phonon frequency of 1580 cm(-1), based on the measured spectra. Our demonstration opens an avenue for the exploration of few-photon nonlinear optics and slow light in this novel two-dimensional material.

Interaction of single quantum emitter and dark plasmon supported by a metal nanoring.

We explore the interaction between a quantum emitter and a metal nanoring by numerical solution of coupled Maxwell-Liouville equations. When the quantum emitter and nanoring are subjected to an incident plane wave, coupling between the quantum emitter and a dark plasmon supported by the nanoring gives rise to a similar lineshape to the familiar Fano type. It results from the excitation of a dark plasmon via intermediary participation of the quantum emitter. The dark plasmon is characterized through the width and shift parameters of the emitter peak in the absorption spectrum of the nanoparticle. Our results are obtained with the help of finite-difference time-domain method and a recently proposed symmetry-adapted averaging approach.

Photon emission rate engineering using graphene nanodisc cavities

In this work, we present a systematic study of the plasmon modes in a system of vertically stacked pair of graphene discs. Quasistatic approximation is used to model the eigenmodes of the system. Eigen-response theory is employed to explain the spatial dependence of the coupling between the plasmon modes and a quantum emitter. These results show a good match between the semi-analytical calculation and full-wave simulations. Secondly, we have shown that it is possible to engineer the decay rates of a quantum emitter placed inside and near this cavity, using Fermi level tuning, via gate voltages and variation of emitter location and polarization. We highlighted that by coupling to the bright plasmon mode, the radiative efficiency of the emitter can be enhanced compared to the single graphene disc case, whereas the dark plasmon mode suppresses the radiative efficiency.

Electron-photon scattering mediated by localized plasmons: A quantitative analysis by eigen-response theory

We show that the scattering interaction between a high energy electron and a photon can be strongly enhanced by different types of localized plasmons in a nontrivial way. The scattering interaction is predicted by an eigen-response theory, numerically verified by finite-difference-time-domain simulation, and experimentally verified by cathodoluminescence spectroscopy. We find that the scattering interaction associated with dark plasmons can be as strong as that of bright plasmons. Such a strong interaction may offer new opportunities to improve single-plasmon detection and high-resolution characterization techniques for high quality plasmonic materials.

Direct excitation of dark plasmonic resonances under visible light at normal incidence

Dark plasmon resonance modes are optical modes that have small scattering cross-sections and are thus difficult to excite directly by light at normal incidence. In this paper, we propose to excite quadrupolar and higher-order modes with normal incident light (in the visible regime) on a continuous plasmonic metallic surface covering a dielectric pillar array, hence resulting in narrow-band perfect absorption. Different from the general electromagnetic means of inducing dark modes, our dark modes are due to charge densities that are electrically induced by the standing-wave resonance of current on the thin metal sidewall of pillars. This new means of exciting dark modes can significantly improve the excitation efficiency and also provides an easy way to excite strong higher-order modes.

Excitation of Multiple Fano-Like Resonances Induced by Higher Order Plasmon modes in Three-Layered Bimetallic Nanoshell Dimer

The presence of plasmonic Fano-like resonances in the optical response of isolated and dimer metal-dielectric-metal nanostructures are investigated theoretically. The nanostructures are engineered in such a way to support multiple Fano-like resonances that are induced by the interference of bright and dark plasmon modes. It is found that the dimer resonators exhibit different types of Fano resonances for both the transverse and longitudinal polarizations unlike conventional nanodimers. Several configurations of the dimer Fano resonator are analyzed with special emphasis on the Fano spectral line shape. Breaking the symmetry of the dimer nanostructure in various directions control the asymmetric line shape and provides different kinds of unique Fano resonances. In certain cases, the Fano resonators exhibit multiple Fano resonances that are particularly significant for plasmon line shaping and can serve as platforms for multi-wavelength sensing applications.

Coexistence of classical and quantum plasmonics in large plasmonic structures with subnanometer gaps

Large metal nanostructures with subnanometer interparticle separations (gaps) can provide extremely high local fields and are of particular interest in surface enhanced spectroscopy, as well as for basic understanding of plasmonics. In this experimental electron energy loss study, we monitor the transition of plasmonic dimers from a classical to a quantum system by decreasing gaps to dimensions when tunneling occurs and a conductive nanobridge evolves. Our studies show that silver dimers with atomic scale gaps can exhibit a regime, in which charge transfer plasmon modes, as a hallmark of a quantum nature, and “classical” bright and dark dipolar plasmon modes can be seen simultaneously.

High spatial resolution mapping of surface plasmon resonance modes in single and aggregated gold nanoparticles assembled on DNA strands

We present the mapping of the full plasmonic mode spectrum for single and aggregated gold nanoparticles linked through DNA strands to a silicon nitride substrate. A comprehensive analysis of the electron energy loss spectroscopy images maps was performed on nanoparticles standing alone, dimers, and clusters of nanoparticles. The experimental results were confirmed by numerical calculations using the Mie theory and Gans-Mie theory for solving Maxwell's equations. Both bright and dark surface plasmon modes have been unveiled.PACS78.67.Bf; 61.46.Df; 87.64.Ee