Related papers: Resolution and enhancement in nanoantenna-based fl…
We demonstrate that the emission of light by fluorescent molecules in the proximity of periodic arrays of nanoantennas or plasmonic crystals can be strongly modified when the arrays are covered by a dielectric film. The coupling between…
We resolve the photokinetic rates enhancement of Rhodamine 6G molecules diffusing in a water-glycerol mixture within a single nanometric aperture milled in an opaque aluminium film. Combining fluorescence correlation spectroscopy and…
Watching the motion of electrons on their natural nanometre length- and femtosecond time scales is a fundamental goal and an open challenge of contemporary ultrafast science. Optical techniques and electron microscopy currently mostly…
An effective approach to improve the detection efficiency of nanoscale light sources relies on a planar antenna configuration, which beams the emitted light into a narrow cone. Planar antennas operate like optical Yagi-Uda antennas, where…
Nanotechnology research requires the routine use of characterization methods with high spatial resolution. These experiments are rather costly, not only from the point of view of the expensive microscopes, but also considering the need of a…
To implement quantum light sources based on quantum emitters in applications, it is desirable to improve the extraction efficiency of single photons. In particular controlling the directionality and solid angle of the emission are key…
This paper addresses recent experimental findings about luminescence of a gold tip in near-field interaction with a gold surface. Our electrochemically etched gold tips show a typical, intrinsic luminescence that we exploit to track the…
The resolution of far-field optical microscopes, which rely on propagating optical modes, is widely believed to be limited because of diffraction to a value on the order of a half-wavelength $\lambda /2$ of the light used. Although…
The optical structure of several AGN has been studied using the Fine Guidance Sensors (FGS) on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). The FGSs are interferometric devices which can resolve structure on scales of 20 milliarcsecs or less and hence…
Superconducting nanowire single photon detectors are rapidly emerging as a key infrared photon-counting technology. Two front-side-coupled silver dipole nanoantennas, simulated to have resonances at 1480 nm and 1525 nm, were fabricated in a…
We fabricated hybrid metal-dielectric nanoantennas and measured their optical response at three different wavelengths. The nanostructure is fabricated on a bilayer film formed by the sequential deposition of silicon and gold on a…
Super-resolution microscopy has revolutionized optical fluorescence imaging by improving 3D resolution by 1-2 orders of magnitude. While different methods can successfully increase the resolution, all methods share significant differences…
Improving phosphor photoluminescence efficiency is a key parameter to boost the performances of many optical devices. In this work, colloidal silver nanocubes, homogeneously spread on a luminescent surface, have proved to help both…
Gold nanostructures have important applications in nanoelectronics, nano-optics as well as in precision metrology due to their intriguing opto-electronic properties. These properties are governed by the bulk band structure but to some…
We theoretically investigate the dependence of the enhancement of optical near-fields at nanometric tips on the shape, size, and material of the tip. We confirm a strong dependence of the field enhancement factor on the radius of curvature.…
The photoluminescence (PL) quantum yield of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) is relatively low, with various quenching effects by metallic species reported in the literature. Here, we report the first case of metal enhanced…
Motivated by recent experiments [Ward et al., Nature Nanotech. 5, 732 (2010)], we present here a theoretical analysis of the optical response of sharp gold electrodes separated by a subnanometer gap. In particular, we have used classical…
Metal nanostructures act as powerful optical antennas[1, 2] because collective modes of the electron fluid in the metal are excited when light strikes the surface of the nanostructure. These excitations, known as plasmons, can have…
In single molecule localisation super-resolution microscopy the need for repeated image capture limits the imaging speed, while the size of fluorescence probes limits the possible theoretical localisation resolution. Here, we demonstrated a…
The use of nanostructures to enhance the emission of single-photon sources has withdrawn some attention in last decade due to the development of quantum technologies. In particular, the use of metallic and high refractive index dielectric…