Capturing photons with transformation optics

Metallic objects in close contact and illuminated by light show spectacular enhancements of electromagnetic fields due to excitation of surface plasmons, which have the potential for exploitation in ultra sensitive spectroscopy and in nonlinear phenomena. They also play a role in van der Waals force...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature physics 2013-08, Vol.9 (8), p.518-522
Main Authors: Pendry, J. B., Fernández-Domínguez, A. I., Luo, Yu, Zhao, Rongkuo
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
639/624/399/1105
639/766/400/1021
639/766/400/1105
Absorption
Absorption spectra
Atomic
Classical and Continuum Physics
Complex Systems
Condensed Matter Physics
Contact
Electromagnetic fields
Electromagnetics
Exploitation
Friction
Heat transfer
Magnetic fields
Mathematical and Computational Physics
Molecular
Optical and Plasma Physics
Optics
Photons
Physics
Quantitative analysis
Spatial distribution
Spectroscopy
Spectrum analysis
Theoretical
Transformations
Van der Waals forces
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Summary:Metallic objects in close contact and illuminated by light show spectacular enhancements of electromagnetic fields due to excitation of surface plasmons, which have the potential for exploitation in ultra sensitive spectroscopy and in nonlinear phenomena. They also play a role in van der Waals forces, heat transfer and non contact friction. The extremes of lengthscales, varying from the micrometre to the subnanometre, challenge direct computational attack. Here we show that transformation optics enables an analytic approach that offers both physical insight and easy access to quantitative analysis. For two metal spheres at various separations we present details of the technique and discuss the optical absorption spectrum, spatial distribution of the modes and the van der Waals forces. The modelling of plasmonic systems is complicated by the broad range of length scales involved: the physical dimensions of the structure might be as small as 1 nm, whereas the wavelength of the light involved can be a few hundred nanometres. It is now shown that transformation optics, a technique successfully used to design metamaterials, is also valuable for circumventing these problems.
ISSN:1745-2473
1745-2481
DOI:10.1038/nphys2667