DocumentCode :
2284041
Title :
Metal optics, optical antennas, and spontaneous hyper-emission
Author :
Yablonovitch, Eli
Author_Institution :
Electr. Engineeing & Comput. Sci. Dept., Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA, USA
fYear :
2010
fDate :
17-20 Aug. 2010
Firstpage :
13
Lastpage :
14
Abstract :
For almost 50 years, stimulated emission has been stronger and far more important than spontaneous emission. Indeed spontaneous emission has been looked down upon, as a weak effect. Now a new science of enhanced spontaneous emission is emerging, that will make spontaneous emission faster than any possible stimulated emission. This new science depends upon the use of nanoscale metallic optical elements, as antennas for spontaneous emission. The overall increase in spontaneous emission rate can be roughly 8 orders of magnitude! Under favorable circumstances the spontaneous emission rate can be comparable to the optical frequency itself, which is unprecedented. Among the applications will be: (1) Direct modulation of LED´s will extend above 1THz, far faster than the direct modulation speed of any laser. This may define the future of short distance data-communications technology. (2) Materials which do not fluoresce or luminesce, owing to strong non-radiative losses (i.e. most molecules), will now become spectroscopically accessible since their spontaneous emission will now compete favorably with non-radiative losses. This is expected to have revolutionary implications in basic biological research, since a local probe can be inserted into a cell to optically interrogate the molecules at the tip. The lecture will provide the basic background in metal optics, and in optical frequency antennas required to understand the photo-physics of this new form of light emission.
Keywords :
antenna theory; nanophotonics; optical elements; optical losses; optical materials; optical modulation; spontaneous emission; direct LED modulation; light emission photophysics; metal optics; nanoscale metallic optical elements; nonradiative losses; optical antennas; optical frequency antennas; spontaneous emission rate; spontaneous hyperemission;
fLanguage :
English
Publisher :
ieee
Conference_Titel :
Nanotechnology (IEEE-NANO), 2010 10th IEEE Conference on
Conference_Location :
Seoul
ISSN :
1944-9399
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4244-7033-4
Electronic_ISBN :
1944-9399
Type :
conf
DOI :
10.1109/NANO.2010.5697734
Filename :
5697734
Link To Document :
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