Probing photonic Bloch wavefunctions with plasmon-coupled leakage radiation.

We demonstrate theoretically and experimentally the direct observation of photonic Bloch wavefunctions in dielectric loaded plasmonic crystals. The ultimate ability to observe the Bloch wavefunctions in the surface emission images depends not on the light diffraction through the holes but on the strength of the in-plane light scattering from the individual lattice features and the presence of the metal layer which allows the light propagating within the crystal to be imaged in the far-field. Experimental results are in excellent agreement with simulated surface emission and back focal plane images of plasmonic crystals.

Does the leakage radiation profile mirror the intensity profile of surface plasmon polaritons?: comment.

We comment on a recent paper [Opt. Lett.35, 1944 (2010)].

SPP tomography: a simple wide-field nanoscope.

We explore the wide-field optical nanoimaging capabilities of the surface plasmon polariton (SPP) tomography technique. We show that nanofeatures with lateral dimensions smaller than λ/20 can be observed in the surface emission (SE) images of plasmonic crystals with a period of 300 nm. Moreover, as a proof-of-concept, we demonstrate that SPP tomography permits to resolve two single objects with a center-to-center separation of 200 nm and edge-to-edge separation as small as λ/7. We present a comprehensive discussion about the nanoimaging capabilities of the SPP tomography technique. In contrast to other optical subwavelength resolution techniques, in our approach for imaging nanosize features, enhanced evanescent waves are coupled to the far-field via leakage radiation associated with SPPs excited by near-field fluorescence; therefore wide-field images, which are not out-of-plane diffraction-limited, are formed directly in the microscope's camera. We also discuss additional imaging processing capabilities associated with the fact that SPP tomography SE images are formed by the microscope lenses through an analog tomography process.

Direct space-to-time pulse shaper with reflective arrayed waveguide gratings and phase masks.

We demonstrate for what we believe to be the first time the generation of sequences of ultrafast optical pulses by phase modulation in a direct space-to-time pulse shaper. The pulse shaper is based on the combination of a reflective arrayed waveguide grating multiplexer and an external reflector. The spatial modulation of the phase was obtained by fabricating corrugated patterns on the external reflector. We demonstrate that pulse sequences with different repetition rates can be obtained by changing the period in the patterned mask.