Mode-matching for Optical Antennas
Abstract
The emission rate of a point dipole can be strongly increased in presence of a well-designed optical antenna. Yet, optical antenna design is largely based on radio-frequency rules, ignoring e.g.~ohmic losses and non-negligible field penetration in metals at optical frequencies. Here we combine reciprocity and Poynting's theorem to derive a set of optical-frequency antenna design rules for benchmarking and optimizing the performance of optical antennas driven by single quantum emitters. Based on these findings a novel plasmonic cavity antenna design is presented exhibiting a considerably improved performance compared to a reference two-wire antenna. Our work will be useful for the design of high-performance optical antennas and nanoresonators for diverse applications ranging from quantum optics to antenna-enhanced single-emitter spectroscopy and sensing.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1611.05399,
title = {Mode-matching for Optical Antennas},
author = {Thorsten Feichtner and Silke Christiansen and Bert Hecht},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1611.05399},
year = {2017}
}
Comments
4 pages + appendices; 2 + 4 figures, 1 Table