SPP 1391: Ultrafast Nanooptics

本优先项目的目的是分析、相干控制和利用金属纳米结构和混合纳米结构中电磁激励的时空动力学。在这样的系统中，电磁激励往往是高度局域化和强烈增强的。这种场定位现象在各种学科的重要应用中发挥着关键作用，包括实现新型激光结构，利用光学非线性进行超灵敏的化学和生物探测，以及开发用于量子信息处理的增强单光子源。超快宽带光脉冲对纳米结构的相干激发增加了时间自由度，并允许控制纳米局域场的时空特性。不断发展的超快纳米光学领域提供了远远超过高时间和空间分辨率的总和。它提供了现有超快技术无法达到的近场激发和相互作用，从而产生了巨大的附加价值。理解和控制纳米结构中的电磁场动力学是一个具有挑战性的基础实验和理论问题。在理论方面，挑战在于自洽地描述量子系统和介观电磁场的耦合演化。本重点项目的研究课题包括超短激光脉冲与纳米结构之间的耦合、宽带纳米光学激励的传播、纳米光学中的非线性现象以及纳米光学激励的相干控制。除了基本方面，新的光谱学应用也在物理学、化学和生物学之间的跨学科领域实现。

The aim of this Priority Programme is to analyse, coherently control and utilise the spatiotemporal dynamics of electromagnetic excitations in metallic nanostructures and hybrid nanostructures. In such systems, electromagnetic excitations tend to be highly localised and strongly enhanced. Such field-localisation phenomena play a key role in a variety of important applications across the disciplines, including the realisation of novel laser structures, the exploitation of optical nonlinearities for ultra-sensitive chemical and biological probing, and the development of enhanced single-photon sources for quantum information processing. The coherent excitation of nanostructures by ultrafast broadband light pulses adds the temporal degree of freedom and allows for controlling the spatiotemporal properties of nanolocalised fields. The evolving field of Ultrafast nanooptics offers substantially more than the sum of high temporal and spatial resolution. It yields enormous added value by providing access to near-field excitations and interactions that are beyond the reach of existing ultrafast techniques. Understanding and manipulating the electromagnetic field dynamics in nanostructures is a challenging and fundamental experimental and theoretical problem. On the theoretical side, the challenge consists in self-consistently describing the coupled evolution of quantum systems and mesoscopic electromagnetic fields. The research topics tackled in this Priority Programme cover the coupling between ultrashort laser pulses and nanostructures, the propagation of broadband nanooptical excitations, nonlinear phenomena in nanooptics, and coherent control of nanooptical excitations. In addition to fundamental aspects also new spectroscopic applications are realised in the interdisciplinary field between physics, chemistry and biology.