Publications by authors named "Pierre Billaud"

This article describes a high sensitivity spectrophotometer designed to detect the overall extinction of light by a single nanoparticle (NP) in the 10(-4)-10(-5) relative range, using a transmission measurement configuration. We focus here on the simple and low cost scheme where a white lamp is used as a light source, permitting easy and broadband extinction measurements (300-900 nm). Using a microscope, in a confocal geometry, an increased sensitivity is reached thanks to a modulation of the NP position under the light spot combined with lock-in detection.

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We develop a new and numerically efficient formalism to describe the general problem of the scattering and absorption of light by a spherical metal or dielectric particle illuminated by a tightly focused beam. The theory is based on (i) the generalized Mie theory equations, (ii) the plane-wave decomposition of the converging light beam, and (iii) the expansion of a plane wave in terms of vector spherical harmonics. The predictions of the model are illustrated in the case of silver nanoparticles.

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