measurement-scattering-nonlinearities-from-single-plasmonic

Measurement of Scattering Nonlinearities from a Single Plasmonic Nanoparticle

Plasmonics, which are based on the collective oscillation of electrons due to light excitation, involve strongly enhanced local electric fields and thus ...

Osaka University

We show that scattering from a single gold nanoparticle is saturable for the first time. Wavelength-dependent study reveals that the saturation behavior is governed by depletion of surface plasmon resonance, not the thermal effect. We observed interesting flattening of the point spread function of scattering from a single nanoparticle due to saturation. By extracting the saturated part of scattering via temporal modulation, we achieve λ/8 point spread function in far-field imaging with unambiguous separation of adjacent particles.

Measurement of a saturated emission of optical radiation from gold nanoparticles: application to an ultrahigh resolution microscope.

Nonlinear plasmonics has attracted a lot of interests due to its wide applications. Recently, we demonstrated saturation and reverse saturation of scattering from a single plasmonic nanoparticle, which exhibits extremely narrow side lobes and central peaks in scattering images [ACS Photonics 1(1), 32 (2014)]. It is desirable to extract the reversed saturated part to further enhance optical resolution. However, such separation is not possible with conventional confocal microscope. Here we combine reverse saturable scattering and saturated excitation (SAX) microscopy. With quantitative analyses of amplitude and phase of SAX signals, unexpectedly high-order nonlinearities are revealed. Our result provides greatly reduced width in point spread function of scattering-based optical microscopy. It will find applications in not only nonlinear material analysis, but also high-resolution biomedical microscopy.

Ryosuke Oketani

Department of Applied Physics

Osaka University

Measurement of Scattering Nonlinearities from a Single Plasmonic Nanoparticle

Ryosuke Oketani

.css-o250i3{font-size:18px;font-family:Open Sans,sans-serif;line-height:21.6px;}Department of Applied Physics

Osaka University

Measurement of Scattering Nonlinearities from a Single Plasmonic Nanoparticle

Department of Applied Physics