Controlling near-field optical intensities in metal nanoparticle systems by polarization pulse shaping

摘要

Coherent control of near-fields in the proximity of nanoparticles is a promising tool for shaping the temporal and spatial properties of light at the nano-scale. Numerical simulations on a series of progressively more complex metallic nanoparticle systems were carried out to explore in detail the mechanisms of control. We find that an important element for the controllability of intensity localization is the spatial variation of the phase in the near-field that is due either to the interference between the plane incident wave and the near-field of the nanosystem or to the interference of fields generated by different parts of the nanosystem. For a collection of random nanoparticles we show that it is possible to select the appearance of highly localized hot spots.