We have a new paper in Materials Research Bulletin to be published in a special issue on Recent Advances in Functional Materials
The paper is about “Sub-wavelength plasmon polaritons channeling of whispering gallery modes of fluorescent silica microresonator”
Individual spherical objects, such as a silica-microsphere, when excited with a laser under certain conditions, exhibit a set of optical resonances called as “whispering gallery modes” (WGMs). These modes are very sharp (high Q value) and can be harnessed as optical resonators. An interesting prospect is to channel the WGMs through a nanoscale plasmonic waveguide, such as a single silver nanowire, and study the optical emission.
Motivated by this prospect, Sunny Tiwari and Chetna Taneja from my group experimentally show how to channel WGMs through a plasmonic silver nanowire waveguide. They go a step ahead and show the spectral and angular characteristics of such a hybrid optical system. These experiments motivate further questions related to micro-resonances and angular spectrum distribution in dielectric-plasmonic hybrid systems, and can be harnessed to design compact micro-lasers and on-chip couplers. With some effort, they can also be optically trapped and manipulated.
arxiv link to the paper : https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.10698
DOI of the published paper: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.materresbull.2021.111412
