English

Electrostatic control over optically-pumped hot electrons in optical gap antennas

Optics 2020-06-23 v1

Abstract

We investigate the influence of a static electric field on the incoherent nonlinear response of an unloaded electrically-contacted nanoscale optical gap antenna. Upon excitation by a tightly focused near-infrared femtosecond laser beam, a transient elevated temperature of the electronic distribution results in a broadband emission of nonlinear photoluminescence (N-PL). We demonstrate a modulation of the yield at which driving photons are frequency up-converted by means of an external control of the electronic surface charge density. We show that the electron temperature and consequently the N-PL intensity can be enhanced or reduced depending on the command polarity and the strength of the control static field. A modulation depth larger than 100\% is observed for activation voltages of a few volts.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2006.12329,
  title  = {Electrostatic control over optically-pumped hot electrons in optical gap antennas},
  author = {Adrian Agreda and Sviatlana Viarbitskaya and Igor V. Smetanin and Alexander V. Uskov and Gérard Colas des Francs and Alexandre Bouhelier},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2006.12329},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

12 pages, 10 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-23T16:31:27.616Z