Optical seminar | 01 October 2021

In this presentation, we will address a series of fundamental issues that are emerging within the fast growing field of nonlinear plasmonics. In the first part of the discussion, we will treat the ultrafast dynamics of photo-generated hot carriers in optical antennas. We show in this work that multi-photon photoluminescence emitted by optical antennas is a valuable tool to study photo-generated hot carrier dynamics. We will discuss how the carriers’ relaxation dynamics is modified by the plasmon and demonstrate that the temporal response is a function of the energies of the carriers relative to the Fermi level. In a second part, we will discuss another finding related to nonlinear optical antennas. We show that radiation is not only locally emitting photons at the laser excitation site but by the entire body of antenna. We demonstrate that such a delocalized response is mediated by the underlying surface plasmon modal landscape, enabling thereby a polariton-mediated spatial tailoring and design of coherent and incoherent nonlinear responses. We will discuss the possibility to engineer the spatial distribution of the surface plasmon modes to implement advanced functionalities such as Boolean logic gates. We will conclude the presentation by showing how such nonlinear responses can be controlled on-demand by a static electrical command.

Main paper/arXiv, related to the seminar, and other references

- Photon bunching of the nonlinear photoluminescence emitted by plasmonics metals
Konstantin Malchow, Alexandre Bouhelier, J. Opt. Soc. Am. B-Opt. Phys. - n° 38 - 2021 - 576-583

- Electrostatic Control over Optically Pumped Hot Electrons in Optical Gap Antennas
Adrian Agreda, Sviatlana Viarbitskaya, Igor V. Smetanin, Alexander V. Uskov, Gerard Colas des Francs, Alexandre Bouhelier,
ACS Photonics - n° 7 - 2020 - 2153-2162

-Dynamics, Efficiency, and Energy Distribution of Nonlinear Plasmon-Assisted Generation of Hot Carriers
Olivier Demichel, Marlene Petit, Sviatlana Viarbitskaya, Regis Mejard, Frederique de Fornel, Edouard Hertz, Franck Billard, Alexandre Bouhelier, Benoit Cluzel, ACS Photonics - n° 3 - 2016 - 791-795

- Delocalization of Nonlinear Optical Responses in Plasmonic Nanoantennas
Sviatlana Viarbitskaya, Olivier Demichel, Benoit Cluzel, Gerard Colas des Francs, Alexandre Bouhelier,
Phys. Rev. Lett. - n° 115 - 2015 - 197401