U-Shaped Switches for Optical Information Processing at the Nanoscale
✍ Scribed by Ventsislav K. Valev; Alejandro V. Silhanek; Ben De Clercq; Werner Gillijns; Yogesh Jeyaram; Xuezhi Zheng; Vladimir Volskiy; Oleg A. Aktsipetrov; Guy A. E. Vandenbosch; Marcel Ameloot; Victor V. Moshchalkov; Thierry Verbiest
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2011
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 906 KB
- Volume
- 7
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 1613-6810
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Fully light-based circuits are becoming a realistic possibility due to the recent advances in metamaterials. The latter are artifi cial materials engineered for displaying unusual optical properties, such as negative refractive index, [ 1 ] extraordinary transmission, [ 2 ] superlensing, cloaking etc. [ 3 ] In an optical nanocircuit, metamaterials could take the place of standard electronic components. [4][5][6] In such devices, light waves would be used instead of electrons. The possibility arises from the fact that light waves can couple to collective excitations of electrons at the surfaces of metallic nanostructures, a property referred to as surface plasmon resonance.
Because these optically induced resonances occur at the surfaces and interfaces of the nanostructures, they can readily be investigated with a surface-and interface-specifi c optical technique, such as second-harmonic generation (SHG). SHG is a nonlinear optical technique that, within the dipole approximation, is forbidden in materials with a center of symmetry. Consequently, SHG is highly sensitive to regions with broken symmetry, such as surfaces (or interfaces), and it has been successfully applied to the study of plasmonic nanomaterials with different geometries. [7][8][9][10] Of particular interest here is the U-shaped nanostructure geometry. This type of structure has attracted a lot of attention due to its particular resonances, [ 11 ] magnetism, [ 12 ] and possible negative index of refraction. [ 13 ] The letter U has two extremities that are alike (same size, parallel) and yet