Berlin 2005 – scientific programme
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HL: Halbleiterphysik
HL 62: Photonische Kristalle IV
HL 62.2: Talk
Wednesday, March 9, 2005, 11:00–11:15, TU P164
Ultrafast light transmission and subradiant damping in plasmonic crystals — •C. Ropers1, D. J. Park2, G. Stibenz1, G. Steinmeyer1, D. S. Kim2 und C. Lienau1 — 1Max-Born-Institut für Nichtlineare Optik undKurzzeitspektroskopie, 12489 Berlin — 2School ofPhysics, Seoul National University, Seoul 151-742, Korea
Surface-bound electromagnetic waves on metals, surface plasmon polaritons (SPP), will play an important role in novel photonic structures, promising an unprecedented amount of light control on the nanoscale. Periodic arrays of subwavelength slits and holes in metallic films serve as important SPP model systems. Here, the SPP lifetime is generally limited to few tens of femtoseconds by the strong SPP coupling to far-field radiation, limiting their use in new photonic elements such as nano-resonators or waveguides. Here, we discuss a novel approach for tailoring the radiative damping in metallic nanohole arrays. Amplitude and phase-resolved transmission experiments with ultrashort, 10 fs light pulses demonstrate a more than 15-fold increase in radiative SPP lifetime to more than 200 fs, induced by the coherent coupling between different SPP resonances. In close analogy to the famous subradiant damping in radiatively coupled atomic systems [1], the formation of antisymmetric coupled SPP eigenmodes leads to this pronounced damping suppression. In plasmonic systems, the spatial structure of the SPP eigemodes can directly be imaged by near-field microscopy, providing insight into the microscopic origin radiative coupling phenomena.
[1] R. H. Dicke, Phys. Rev. 93, 99 (1954)