(405)NANOPHOTONICS LABORATORY TEACHING EXPERIMENTS OPEN TO SENIOR UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS AND GRADUATE STUDENTS

摘要

Propagation of surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs), which are transverse magnetic (TM)polarizedoptical surface waves, along the interface between a metal and a dielectric has attracted significantattention due to its unique optical properties such as a tight confinement below the diffraction limit anda high sensitivity to the surrounding environment. Nowadays study of SPPs that have fascinatingapplications in photonics and optoelectronics is necessary for students. However, SPPs suffer fromlarge attenuation because of the ohmic losses in the metal layer. This limitation makes an obstacle touse laboratory experiments for teaching students within the Degree in Physics and Master inAdvanced Physics whose main objective is an excitation and detection of surface plasmons. The aimof this paper is the design and staging of a simple experiment, using inexpensive optical elementswhich are easy to find in university laboratories, leading to a straightforward approach for theexcitation and propagation of SPPs. In the particular case of our experiment we employ planarwaveguides which were manufactured in our research laboratories by embedding semiconductornanostructures (CdSe with emission in the visible)in PMMA. This nanocomposite was depositedabove a gold layer in order to study the surface plasmon propagation. Such setup will enable astudent to handily couple a laser beam into the plasmonic waveguide and subsequently to measureand characterize the field waveform at the exit surface.