Invited Paper
Tailoring Scattering, Absorption, and Nonlinearity with Plasmonic Nanoparticles

In this talk, I will discuss our recent theoretical and experimental progress to exploit the large field localization and exotic wave interaction with plasmonic materials in order to tailor in unusual ways the scattering, absorption and nonlinear optical response of nanoparticles and arrays of them. I will discuss the possibility of achieving very large field concentration and radiative lifetime using composite nanoparticles with near-zero permittivity [1], of dramatically increasing the ratio of absorption over scattering staggering multiple mismatched resonances in composite nanoparticles [2], and of dramatically boosting local nonlinearities induced by intersubband transitions in multi-quantum-well structures. Details and physical insights into these phenomena will be discussed during the talk.

[1] F. Monticone, and A. Alù, “Embedded Photonic Eigenvalues in 3D Nanostructures,” Physical Review Letters, Vol. 112, No. 21, 213903 (5 pages), May 29, 2014.

[2] N. Mohammadi Estakhri, and A. Alù, “Minimum-Scattering Superaborbers,” Physical Review B, Rapid Communications, Vol. 89, No. 12, 121416(R), March 31, 2014.

[3] J. Lee, M. Tymchenko, C. Argyropoulos, P. Y. Chen, F. Lu, F. Demmerle, G. Boehm, M. C. Amann, A. Alù, and M. A. Belkin, “Giant Nonlinear Response from Plasmonic Metasurfaces Coupled to Intersubband Transitions,” Nature, Vol. 511, No. 7507, pp. 65-69, July 2, 2014.

alu@mail.utexas.edu