Nanoscale engineering of optical antennas

• Applicant: Privatdozent Dr. Hans-Jürgen Eisler
• Subject Area: Experimental Condensed Matter Physics
• Term: from 2007 to 2012
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 34425625

This proposal has the focus to study the linear and nonlinear optical response functions of single resonant optical antennas and arrays thereof under coherent laser excitation quantitatively. These nanometallic architectures shall create novel well-designed light sources using their intrinsic dielectric function with locally enhanced electromagnetic fields – preferentially in their antenna feed gap volume. Expanding the antenna architecture towards fractal structures as well as patch antenna design will lead to broadband optical antenna systems. The light-matter interaction shall be quantified in terms of the linear optical extinction and scattering cross section by means of a common-path interferometer. Moreover, the nonlinear coherent absorption spectroscopy shall be used to quantify spectroscopically the optically allowed antenna modes as well as their symmetric dark modes.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Major Instrumentation: Kombination aus Rasterkraft- und optischem Scanning-Mikroskop
• Instrumentation Group: 5091 Rasterkraft-Mikroskope