Increased rise time of electron temperature during adiabatic plasmon focusing.

Decay of plasmons to hot carriers has recently attracted considerable interest for fundamental studies and applications in quantum plasmonics. Although plasmon-assisted hot carriers in metals have already enabled remarkable physical and chemical phenomena, much remains to be understood to engineer devices. Here, we present an analysis of the spatio-temporal dynamics of hot electrons in an emblematic plasmonic device, the adiabatic nanofocusing surface-plasmon taper.

Anomalous light absorption around subwavelength apertures in metal films.

In this Letter, we study the heat dissipated at metal surfaces by the electromagnetic field scattered by isolated subwavelength apertures in metal screens. In contrast to the common belief that the intensity of waves created by local sources should decrease with the distance from the sources, we reveal that the dissipated heat at the surface remains constant over a broad spatial interval. This behavior that occurs for noble metals at near infrared wavelengths is observed with nonintrusive thermoreflectance measurements and is explained with an analytical model, which underlines the intricate role played by quasicylindrical waves in the phenomenon.

Plasmon switching: observation of dynamic surface plasmon steering by selective mode excitation in a sub-wavelength slit.

We report a plasmon steering method that enables us to dynamically control the direction of surface plasmons generated by a two-mode slit in a thin metal film. By varying the phase between different coherent beams that are incident on the slit, individual waveguide modes are excited. Different linear combinations of the two modes lead to different diffracted fields at the exit of the slit.

Angulo-spectral surface plasmon resonance imaging of nanofabricated grating surfaces.

We present a surface plasmon resonance imaging (SPRI) setup, based on the Kretschmann configuration, capable of simultaneously acquiring the complete spectral and angular plasmonic reflectivity response on all points of the sensing area. Several line poly(methyl methacrylate) grating regions were fabricated on a thin-film gold surface and characterized with this SPRI system. Reflectivity maps of the corrugated regions showing plasmon bandgaps were obtained to illustrate the capability of the setup.

Importance of dye host on absorption, propagation losses, and amplified spontaneous emission for dye-doped polymer thin films.

The absorption spectra of dye-doped polymer thin films made from a variety of five dyes and six matrices, either organic or organomineral, are analyzed to evaluate the residual absorption in the red wavelength tail and in particular at amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) wavelengths. An absorption cutoff wavelength is defined as the extrapolated wavelength at which the absorption losses are expected to become negligible compared to the structure losses. Such absorption-spectrum-extrapolated wavelengths are compared to the ASE wavelengths and found to correlate for most of the dye-matrix couples.