Photoassisted Holography in Azo Dye Doped Polymer Films.

Holographic storage is one of the most important applications in the field of optics, especially for recording and retrieving data, and information storage by interference patterns in photosensitive materials are no exception in this regard. In this work, we give evidence that holograms recorded by interference of two coherent laser beams in azo dye doped polymer films can be controlled by a third incoherent assisting laser beam. We show that light diffraction can be increased or decreased by an assisting beam depending on the respective orientation of the polarizations of the recording and the assisting beams. We also found that photomanipulation of polarization holograms, prepared by polarization modulation, does not depend on the polarization of the assisting beam, whereas, photomanipulation of holograms prepared by intensity modulation strongly depends on the polarization of the assisting beam. Photoselection is shown to play a major role in the photoassisted diffraction process.

Plasmonic coupled modes in metal-dielectric multilayer structures: Fano resonance and giant field enhancement.

We provide an overview of Fano resonance and plasmon induced transparency (PIT) as well as on plasmons coupling in planar structures, and we discuss their application in sensing and enhanced spectroscopy. Metal-insulator-metal (MIM) structures, which are known to support symmetric and anti-symmetric surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) arising from the coupling between two SPPs at the metal-insulator interfaces, exhibit anticrossing behavior of the dispersion relations arising from the coupling of the symmetric SPP and the metal/air SPP. Multilayer structures, formed by a metal film and a high-index dielectric waveguide (WG), separated by a low-index dielectric spacer layer, give narrow resonances of PIT and Fano line shapes. An optimized Fano structure shows a giant field intensity enhancement value of 106 in air at the surface of the high-index dielectric WG. The calculated field enhancement factor and the figure of merit for the sensitivity of the Fano structure in air can be 104 times as large as those of the conventional surface plasmon resonance and WG sensors.

Evanescent-field-coupled guided-mode sensor based on a waveguide grating.

A guided-mode (GM) sensor with a dielectric waveguide grating formed on a thin reflective film using Kretschmann configuration is proposed. Numerical results based on a finite-element method approach indicate a significant resolution improvement due to the excitation of a GM supported by the waveguide grating-sensing media system. The applicability of the waveguide theory to the design of waveguide gratings is validated by a comparison to the exact electromagnetic theory. Strong localization of an electromagnetic field in the sensing media within the grating with intensity enhancement up to two orders of magnitude is demonstrated. The sensor has potential for biological sensing and imaging applications.

Long-range surface plasmons supported by a bilayer metallic structure for sensing applications.

We show, both theoretically and experimentally, that long-range surface plasmons (LRSPs) are supported by asymmetric structure, consisting of a thin silver/gold bilayer metallic film sandwiched between a magnesium fluoride (i.e., MgF2) buffer layer and a sensing medium (water). The geometrical parameters of the structure are optimized to yield efficient excitation of LRSPs by using transfer matrix method based on Fresnel reflection. The excitation of LRSPs was performed by using a custom-made automated optical setup based on angular interrogation with the precision of 0.01°. We demonstrate that the bimetallic asymmetric structure achieves better minimum reflectivity resolution than monometallic (gold) asymmetric structure. Finally, figures of merit are compared for bimetallic, monometallic, and conventional SPR structures, and we found that the bimetallic asymmetric structure provides a higher figure of merit; e.g., more than double for monometallic LRSP configuration and 8 times as compared to the conventional surface plasmon resonance sensor.

Surface plasmon sensing with different metals in single and double layer configurations.

The resolution of surface plasmon resonance sensors in the geometry of Kretschmann is estimated by numerical simulation for different thicknesses of combinations of silver (Ag), copper, and aluminum (Al) metallic layers with a gold coating layer at set of wavelengths in cases of detecting the change of the refractive index of the bulk medium and the change in optical thickness of an adsorption layer. The lowest resolution among the examined combinations of the sensors is achieved with a single Al layer for ultraviolet region and with a single Ag layer for longer wavelengths.