Optimizing geometry of low-Q all-metal Fabry-Pérot microcavity for fluorescence spectroscopy
Abstract Fluorescence spectroscopy is commonly employed to study the excited-state photophysics of organic molecules. Planar Fabry-Pérot microcavities play an essential role in such studies and a strategic cavity design is necessary to attain an enhanced light-matter interaction. In this work, we computationally study different geometries for a planar metallic Fabry-Pérot microcavity tuned for the absorption of Sulforhodamine 101, a typical dye for fluorescence spectroscopy. The cavity consists of a polymer layer enclosed between two silver mirrors, where the thicknesses of all the three layers are varied to optimize the cavity. Our transfer-matrix and finite-difference time-domain simulati…
Spatial localization of hotspots in Fano-resonant plasmonic oligomers for surface-enhanced coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering
AbstractRealization of Fano resonance in plasmonic oligomers is often exploited to design efficient plasmonic substrates for surface-enhanced coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering. Disk-type Fano-resonant plasmonic oligomers are widely used to enhance the Raman signal of the probe material. Generally, hot spots are generated in those oligomers at different spatial locations at different wavelengths and only a few spatially overlapping hot spots at multiple wavelengths can be achieved with oblique incidence of excitation light. In this work, we proposed hexagonal gold nanoparticle based Fano-resonant plasmonic oligomers that can yield higher number of spatially overlapped hot spots compared …
Influence of Fano resonance on SERS enhancement in Fano-plasmonic oligomers
Plasmonic oligomers can provide profound Fano resonance in their scattering responses. The sub-radiant mode of Fano resonance can result in significant near-field enhancement due to its light trapping capability into the so-called hotspots. Appearance of these highly localized hotspots at the excitation and/or Stokes wavelengths of the analytes makes such oligomers promising SERS active substrates. In this work, we numerically and experimentally investigate optical properties of two disk-type gold oligomers, which have different strength and origin of Fano resonance. Raman analysis of rhodamine 6G and adenine with the presence of the fabricated oligomers clearly indicates that an increment …
Numerical study on the limit of quasi-static approximation for plasmonic nanosphere
Plasmonic nanospheres are often employed as resonant substrates in many nanophotonic applications, like in enhanced spectroscopy, near-field microscopy, photovoltaics, and sensing. Accurate calculation and tuning of optical responses of such nanospheres are essential to achieve optimal performance. Mie theory is widely used to calculate optical properties of spherical particles. Although, an approximated version of Mie approach, the quasi-static approximation (QSA) can also be used to determine the very same properties of those spheres with a lot simpler formulations. In this work, we report our numerical study on the limit and accuracy of QSA with respect to the rigorous Mie approach. We c…
Modeling optical constants from the absorption of organic thin films using a modified Lorentz oscillator model
Optical constants of organic thin films can be evaluated using the Lorentz oscillator model (LOM) which fails to fit inhomogeneously broadened absorption of highly concentrated molecular films. In modified LOM (MLOM), the inhomogeneous broadening is implemented through a frequency-dependent adjustable broadening function. In this work, we evaluate the optical constants of rhodamine 6G doped poly-vinyl alcohol thin films with varying doping concentration (including also extensively high concentrations) using MLOM, which outperforms LOM by showing a better agreement with the experimental results. Our proposed method provides a way to accurately determine optical constants of isotropic organic…
Ytterbium-doped fibers for high-power fiber lasers
Ytterbium (Yb) doped optical fibers are widely used in high-power applications and ultrafast lasing since they show adequate power-handling capability and provide desirable beam quality. Yb-doped fibers with large core area can support high power but often act as a multimode fiber and compromise the output beam quality. Hence, it is important to attain a proper balance between the power-handling capability and the beam quality. Yb-doped fibers as a gain medium in pulsed fiber laser systems are prone to nonlinear optical effects due to the presence of high peak power in the ultrashort pulses. Nonlinearity such as self phase modulation (SPM) affects the width and the shape of the pulse, both …
Fabrication-friendly polarization-sensitive plasmonic grating for optimal surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy
Plasmonic nanostructures are widely utilized in surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) from ultraviolet to near-infrared applications. Periodic nanoplasmonic systems such as plasmonic gratings are of great interest as SERS-active substrates due to their strong polarization dependence and ease of fabrication. In this work, we modelled a silver grating that manifests a subradiant plasmonic resonance as a dip in its reflectivity with significant near-field enhancement only for transverse-magnetic (TM) polarization of light. We investigated the role of its fill factor, commonly defined as a ratio between the width of the grating groove and the grating period, on the SERS enhancement. We des…
SERS activity of photoreduced silver chloride crystals
Metal nanoparticles are widely acclaimed as plasmonic substrates for surface -enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) due to their unique particle plasmon resonances at visible and near infrared regions. Silver nanoparticles are typically employed in SERS when the targeted Raman signature zone of analytes lies at ultra-violet and/or blue to green spectral regimes. Even though silver has strong plasmonic properties, silver-based substrates are often affected by the atmospheric oxidation and show degradation in their SERS performance. One way to overcome this limitation is to use silver chloride crystals as oxidation resistant intermediate and photoreduce them to 'fresh' silver just before SERS an…