Deterministic spatio-temporal control of nano-optical fields in optical antennas and nano transmission lines

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how pulse shaping techniques can precisely control ultrafast optical near fields in nano-antennas and transmission lines, enabling deterministic manipulation of light at nanoscales.

Contribution

It introduces a method combining FDTD simulations and Fourier analysis to achieve deterministic temporal control of nano-optical fields in resonant structures.

Findings

Pulse shaping enables optimal temporal compression of near fields.

The method applies to asymmetric resonant antennas and coupled transmission lines.

Enhanced control of light-matter interactions at the nanoscale.

Abstract

We show that pulse shaping techniques can be applied to tailor the ultrafast temporal response of the strongly confined and enhanced optical near fields in the feed gap of resonant optical antennas (ROAs). Using finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulations followed by Fourier transformation, we obtain the impulse response of a nano structure in the frequency domain, which allows obtaining its temporal response to any arbitrary pulse shape. We apply the method to achieve deterministic optimal temporal field compression in ROAs with reduced symmetry and in a two-wire transmission line connected to a symmetric dipole antenna. The method described here will be of importance for experiments involving coherent control of field propagation in nanophotonic structures and of light-induced processes in nanometer scale volumes.