Study of Plasmon Resonances in Nanoparticles

该奖项由2009年美国复苏和再投资法案(公法111-5)资助。目前，等离子体共振的研究大多采用试探法或实验方法，即通过探测具有不同频率和极化的辐射的纳米粒子。该项目的目标是通过将等离子体共振视为本征值问题来推进直接分析纳米粒子中等离子体共振频率和等离子体激元模式的新技术。该项目研究工作的主要重点将是发展新的边界积分方程法用于等离子体共振的时域分析，寻找入射辐射与特定等离子体激元模式有效耦合的条件，以及研究等离子体激元共振的一般物理性质。人们期待着开发出新的强大的软件工具来设计有前途的工程纳米结构。它还打算探索等离子激元共振在半导体纳米粒子中的器件应用，其中这些共振可以通过光学操纵传导电子密度来控制。这种可控性对全光纳米晶体管的发展特别有希望。此外，该项目的研究活动将包括研究等离子体共振在热辅助和全光磁记录中的应用以及阐明表面增强拉曼散射(SERS)的电磁机制。

"This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5)"Currently plasmon resonances are mostly studied numerically or experimentally by using a ?trial-anderror?approach, i.e., by probing nanoparticles with radiation of various frequencies and polarizations.The goal of this project is to advance novel techniques for the direct analysis of plasmon resonancefrequencies and plasmon modes in nanoparticles by treating plasmon resonances as an eigen valueproblem. The main emphasis of the research work on this project will be the development of novelboundary integral equation techniques for the time-domain analysis of plasmon resonances, finding theconditions for efficient coupling of incident radiation to specific plasmon modes, and the study ofgeneral physical properties of plasmon resonances. It is expected that new powerful software tools willbe developed for the design of promising engineering nanostructures. It is also intended to explore thedevice applications of plasmon resonances in semiconductor nanoparticles where these resonances canbe controlled through optical manipulation of the conduction electron density. This controllability isespecially promising for the development of all-optical nanotransistors. Furthermore, the researchactivities on this project will include the study of applications of plasmon resonances in both thermallyassisted and all-optical magnetic recording as well as the elucidation of the electromagnetic mechanismof surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS).