Post-docs:
Émilien Mallet
Students:
Caroline Lemaître
Rabih Ajib
The PGP Project is a "Young Researcher" project funded by the French National Research Agency.
We want to study how light propagates in extremely thin metallic waveguides (typically a less than 10 nanometer thick dielectric between two metals). The mode that is guided in such a structure is slow. It presents a very low wavelength, which has two main effects: it allows to design resonators that are very small compared to the wavelength, very sensitive and that concentrate light very effectively; the interaction between electrons inside the metal has a measurable effect on the gap-plasmon, influencing the behavior of the structure. These are the two aspects the projects is aimed to explore.
Figure: Left, the gap-plasmon propagation constant (the higher the constant, the slower the mode), showing the difference between the classical theory (blue, based on the Drude model) and the nonlocal theory (green). Center: Cavity resonances that can be excited under a patch placed above a metallic film. Right: Nanocubes deposited on a gold surface behave as resonators that can absorb light very efficiently.
Many codes will be published here during the project (for instance those based on Moosh).
First results
Here are the papers the project is based on: