Surface plasma waves arise from the collective oscillations of billions of electrons at the surface of a metal in unison. The simplest way to quantize these waves is by direct analogy to electromagnetic fields in free space, with the surface plasmon, the quantum of the surface plasma wave, playing the same role as the photon. It follows that surface plasmons should exhibit all of the same quant...

In this letter, we report the first observation of surface plasmon-coupled chemiluminescence (SPCC), where the luminescence from chemically induced electronic excited states couples to surface plasmons in a thin continuous silver film. The SPCC is highly directional and predominantly p-polarized, strongly suggesting that the emission is from surface plasmons instead of the luminophores directly...

Optical excitation of surface plasmons in wet-chemically grown monocrystalline silver nanowires ( approximately 100 nm diameter and up to a few tens of micrometers length) is studied by broadband imaging spectroscopy. Surface plasmons excited by an incident light beam in the so-called Kretschmann-Raether configuration give optical interference phenomena in the spectral domain. These spectral os...

Plasmons are collective electron oscillations, preferentially excitable in metals and can be seen as propagating density waves of conduction electrons. They are whether of bulk type and propagate within the material (“3D plasmon”), or along the metal’s surface (2D or surface plasmon). In nanooptics surface plasmons are of special interest, because they can be excited optically (generated at opt...

We apply the conformal transformation technique to study systematically a variety of singular plasmonic structures, including two-dimensional sharp edges, rough surfaces, and nanocrescents. These structures are shown to exhibit two distinct features. First, different from a planar metallic surface, the surface plasmon excitations on the examined structures have a lower bound cutoff at a finite ...

The efficient generation of surface plasmons from free space optical waves is still an open problem in the field. Here we present a methodology and optimized design for a grating coupler. The photoexcitation of surface plasmons at an Ag-SiO2 interface is numerically demonstrated to yield greater than 50% coupling from a Gaussian beam into surface plasmon voltages and currents.

Fluorescence is widely used in biological research. Future advances in biology and medicine often depend on the advances in the capabilities of fluorescence measurements. In this overview paper we describe how a combination of fluorescence, and plasmonics, and nanofabrication can fundamentally change and increase the capabilities of fluorescence technology. This change will be based on the use ...

The influence of surface plasmons on the magneto-optic activity in a two-dimensional hexagonal array is addressed. The experiments were performed using hexagonal array of circular holes in a ferromagnetic Ni film. Well pronounced troughs are observed in the optical reflectivity, resulting from the presence of surface plasmons. The surface plasmons are found to strongly enhance the magneto-optic...

In reports over the past several years, we have demonstrated the efficient collection of optically excited fluorophore emission by its coupling to surface plasmons on thin metallic films, where the coupled luminescence was highly directional and polarized. This phenomenon is referred to as surface plasmon-coupled emission (SPCE). In this current study, we have extended this technique to include...

Employing an interferometric cavity ring-down technique we study the launching, propagation and reflection of surface plasmons on a smooth gold-air interface that is intersected by two parallel, sub-wavelength wide slits. Inside the low-finesse optical cavity defined by these slits the surface plasmon is observed to make multiple bounces. Our experimental data allow us to determine the surface-...