We have designed, fabricated and characterized surface plasmon waveguides for near infrared light in the telecommunications spectrum. These waveguides exhibit losses of -1.2dB/microm and can guide light around 0.5 microm bends. Light can also be efficiently coupled between more conventional silicon waveguides and these plasmon waveguides with compact couplers, and we demonstrate that surface pl...

We present a quantitative analysis of 2D surface plasmon based optical tweezers able to trap microcolloids at a patterned metal surface under low laser intensity. Photonic force microscopy is used to assess the properties of surface plasmon traps, such as confinement and stiffness, revealing stable trapping with forces in the range of a few tens of femtonewtons. We also investigate the specific...

We show that interfering surface plasmon polaritons can be excited with a focused laser beam at normal incidence to a plane metal film. No protrusions or holes are needed in this excitation scheme. Depending on the axial position of the focus, the intensity distribution on the metal surface is either dominated by interferences between counterpropagating plasmons or by a two-lobe pattern charact...

The confined modes of surface plasmon polaritons in boxing ring-shaped nanocavities have been investigated and imaged by using cathodoluminescence spectroscopy. The mode of the out-of-plane field components of surface plasmon polaritons dominates the experimental mode patterns, indicating that the electron beam locally excites the out-of-plane field component of surface plasmon polaritons. Qual...

Structured films with periodic arrays of nanoholes covered by half-cone shells are fabricated via a simple and efficient colloidal lithography method. The designed films show strong polarization dependence in optical transmission. By decreasing the height of half-cone shells the peak shifts and this shift varies strongly for different orthogonal polarizations. Furthermore, the three-dimensional...

The plasmonic coupling between gold caps and holes in thin films was investigated experimentally and through finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) calculations. Sparse colloidal lithography combined with a novel thermal treatment was used to control the vertical spacing between caps and hole arrays and compared to separated arrays of holes or caps. Optical spectroscopy and FDTD simulations revea...

Using time-resolved pump-probe spectroscopy, we have performed the first investigation of the vibrational modes of gold nanoshells. The fundamental isotropic mode launched by a femtosecond pump pulse manifests itself in a pronounced time-domain modulation of the differential transmission probed at the frequency of nanoshell surface plasmon resonance. The modulation amplitude is significantly st...

Surface plasmon polaritons on thin metal films are a well studied phenomena when excited using prism coupled geometries such as the Kretschmann attenuated total reflection configuration. Here we describe a novel interference pattern in the conically scattered light emanating from such a configuration when illuminated by a focused beam. We observe conditions indicating only self-interference of ...