Understanding light-matter interactions such as the dynamic response of a metal to incident light is essential for advancing fundamental research and technological applications e.g. designing plasmonic devices such as nanoantenna directional emitters. The near-field response is determined on a length scale that is intrinsically smaller than the optical diffraction limit and so we use electrons to image the near-field distribution.
We combine photoemission electron microscopy (PEEM) with a variable wavelength laser light source, an optical parametric oscillator (OPO), to perform near-field imaging and spectroscopy of whispering gallery resonator (WGR)1 arrays. These ultrahigh spatially and spectrally resolved measurements show characteristic spectral peaks and near-field mode distributions due to the excitation of different plasmon resonances. Controlling the interference between dipole and quadrupole modes allows us to direct the emission from the nanoantenna.
Additionally we perform femtosecond 2-dimensional coherence spectroscopy2 on a microcavity system containing two well separated WGR nanoantennas. Hybridization of a propagating surface plasmon polariton and the localized surface plasmon in a cavity enables energy transfer between the two coupled nanoantennas.
[1] E. J. R. Vessseur, F. J. García de Abajo and A. Polman Nano Letters 9 3147 (2009)
[2] M. Aeschlimann et al, Science 333, 1723 (2011)
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