No description available.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M. Sc.)--University of Alberta, 2009. / Title from pdf file main screen (viewed on Sept 22, 2009). "A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Alberta." Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1996. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [137]-142).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 152-162).

Plasmonic devices, consisting of subwavelength nanostructures at optical frequency, have been widely applied to many research .elds such as bio-sensing, super-resolution imaging, energy harvesting, nanolaser and so on. The strong con.ned electromag­netic .elds in the a.nity of nanostructures provides an e.cient channel to guide, enhance, and modulate light energy beyond the di.raction limit. In this thesis, we .rst studied the plasmonic devices in linear optical regime, especially from the view of phase information in the light matter interaction; then more e.orts were paid to the nonlinear plasmonics, in which the organic-plasmonic hybrid nanostructures provided a useful platform for demonstrating some interesting physical phenomena. Firstly, we studied the fundamental optical properties of typically propagating surface plasmonic polariton (SPPs), which were generated by plasmonic gratings. Optical elliptical response of excited SPPs was studied experimentally and theoret­ically in both amplitude and phase domains. Then we studied the strong coupling e.ect from plasmonic Fabry-Perot nanocavity, in which giant Rabi splitting phe­nomenon with a splitting energy ~ 148 meV was obtained experimentally. From these studies, the interaction of SPP wave with other resonant structures were well understood from the view point of phase evolution. Secondly, we moved from linear optics the nonlinear plasmonic optics and tried to understand how the plasmon enhancement acts on the nonlinear optical processes. In the .rst example, plasmon enhanced third harmonic generation (THG) on one dimensional gratings was experimentally demonstrated by integrating the nonlinear active medium into the plasmonic devices. Later, the generation of THG vortex beam was also realized by introducing hologram based plasmonic design. Lastly, we re-examined a conventional symmetry problem in nonlinear molecular optics. It was found the that the metacrystal, consisting of plasmonic molecule with feature size much larger than conventional molecules, also follows the conventional selection rules of third harmonic generation. We believe the knowledge we accumulated in this work also provides a strong background for our future studies on ultra-fast plasmonic switching, in which the all-optical low loss, optical switch can be realized by using the engineered optical properties of plasmonic devices.

In principle, the surface plasmon polaritons, at the planar metal/dielectric interface, cannot be excited by incident light. However momentum transfer from incident light to Surface Plasmon Polaritons (SPPs) inside the light line can be achieved by adding a periodic structure at the interface. The lattice wave vector can compensate the difference between incident light and surface wave momentum and satisfy momentum matching requirement. Two methods are commonly used to achieve this goal: first, using prism and second, surface engineering using different array apertures at the metal/dielectric interfaces. In this thesis, the ruled grating pattern at the metal/dielectric interface using conventional photolithography technique was fabricated. The dimension of ruled grating pattern is proportional to expanding/collimating system in the interference set-up. In fact, a large area grating can be utilized for many optoelectronic applications with greater efficiency. In this work, large area grating pattern, 10×10 mm2, on top of the microcavity structure was integrated that permitting cavity mode-SPP coupling. Hence, Rabi-like splitting was observed from the hybrid plasmonic microcavity. The splitting was created from the coupling of cavity mode with the surface plasmon polariton mode; anti-crossing was observed alongside the modal conversional channel on the reflection light measurement. In following, it was experimentally explored the effect of using organic fluorescent molecules inside the hybrid plasmonic microcavity. Accordingly we integrated large area ruled metal grating onto photonic microcavity and assessed the cavity mode-SPP coupling with reflectivity measurement. We got much more grounded modal coupling in presence of florescent molecules within photonic cavity. The anti-crossing was detected with enormous Rabi-like splitting energy at 280 meV in the strong coupling regime. Besides we compared the coupling strength of plasmonic microcavities with various cavity lengths to explore the absorption impact.

As emerging chiral metamaterials, plasmonic nanospirals (NSs) show strong optical activity that is expected to enhance the enantiodiscrimination of chiral molecules or help in the design of a new generation of integrated optical devices. The study of the optical activity of plasmonic NSs is still in its infancy, and no analytical model exists to describe their chiroptical mechanism. In this study, numerical and analytical simulations are devised to investigate the optical activity of plasmonic NSs that are generated by glancing-angle deposition. The findings will pave the way for the development of novel optical and optoelectronic devices with integrated functions. The CD spectrum of a closely packed random AgNS array has two CD peaks in the UV and visible regions with opposite signs. The pitch-normalized CD in the UV regime tends to be independent of the helical pitch, but that in the visible regime decreases in amplitude as helical pitch increases. The difference can be explained using an analytical LC circuit model and finite-element method simulation. The LC circuit model is used to quantitatively evaluate the chiroptical contribution. It is revealed that radiative loss makes an important chiroptical contribution to the two CD modes and that the visible CD mode receives a greater contribution from radiative loss than does the UV CD mode. Finally, the heterochiral biaxial AgNS arrays alter the sign of the visible CD by switching the incident direction, which shows that the arrays can function as circular polarizers in the visible regime. Furthermore, when AgNSs are deposited on a polymer substrate coated with indium tin oxide, the chiroptical flexible thin film has excellent chiroptical stability when exposed to forward mechanical bending, paving the way for the development of flexible or wearable chiroplasmonic devices.

No description available.

This thesis is concerned with the mathematical analysis of plasmon materials and their applications, including the cloaking effect and the super-resolution in imaging induced by plasmon resonances. We consider these phenomena in two regimes, namely, the quasi-static regime and the finite-frequency regime beyond the quasi-static approximation. In the quasi-static regime, we first show that the plasmon resonance could occur for the elastic system in both two and three dimensions. By establishing the primal and dual variational principles and constructing the perfect plasmon waves, we prove that the plasmon resonance can occur for a delicate plasmonic configuration with appropriately choosing Lame parameters. We also apply the spectral method to show the phenomenon of cloaking due to anomalous localized resonance (CALR) through analyzing the spectral system of the Neumann-Poincare (N-P) operator. Moreover, based on the obtained spectral properties of the N-P operator, we strictly verify the plasmon resonance in the quasi-static approximation and construct a general and novel class of plasmonic configurations to ensure the occurrence of the CALR, which significantly generalizes the existing research on plasmon resonances in the literature. Finally, we derive the perturbed displacement field associated with a given elastic source field with the presence of nanoparticles. By analyzing the spectral properties of the associated Neumann-Poincare operator, the leading-order term of the perturbed elastic wave field is determined, which could help to achieve the super-resolution in the elastic imaging. For the case beyond the quasi-static approximation, we develop two approaches to achieve the plasmon resonance. The first one is achieved by the explicit construction, though it is very delicate and subtle. We first show that the cloaking due to anomalous localized resonance could occur for the Helmholtz system within finite frequencies beyond the quasi-static approximation. More precisely, by investigating the spectral system of the corresponding Neumann-Poincare operator within finite frequencies, we include the plasmon parameters, the shape of the plasmonic inclusion and the source term as a whole system to achieve the phenomenon of the cloaking due to anomalous localized resonance. Furthermore, we show that the surface plasmon resonance and the cloaking effect can occur for the Maxwell system beyond the quasi-static approximation by calculating the spectral system of the matrix-valued integral operator. The other one is achieved via the localization and geometrization. Through the investigation on the eigenfunctions of the corresponding Neumann-Poincare operator, we show that the plasmon resonance occurs locally near the high-curvature point of the plasmonic inclusion. It is worth mentioning that we present the first investigation in the literature on the geometric structures of the Neumann-Poincare eigenfunctions.