Coherent control of nanoscale light localization in metamaterial: creating and positioning a sub-wavelength energy hot-spot

摘要

Precise control and manipulation of optical fields on a nanoscale is one ofthe most important and challenging problems in "nanophotonics". Since opticalwavelength is on a much larger microscale, it is impossible to employconventional focusing for that purpose. We show the strong optically-inducedinteractions between discrete meta-molecules in a metamaterial system andcoherent monochromatic continuous light beam with a spatially-tailored phaseprofile can be used to prepare a sub-wavelength scale energy localization. Wellisolated energy hot-spots as small as $\lambda/10$ can be created andpositioned at will on the metamaterial landscape offering new opportunities fordata storage and imaging applications.