Lannebère Sylvain, Silveirinha Mário G
Department of Electrical Engineering-Instituto de Telecomunicações, University of Coimbra, Coimbra 3030-290, Portugal.
Nat Commun. 2015 Oct 30;6:8766. doi: 10.1038/ncomms9766.
The capacity to confine light into a small region of space is of paramount importance in many areas of modern science. Here we suggest a mechanism to store a quantized 'bit' of light--with a very precise amount of energy--in an open core-shell plasmonic structure ('meta-atom') with a nonlinear optical response. Notwithstanding the trapped light state is embedded in the radiation continuum, its lifetime is not limited by the radiation loss. Interestingly, it is shown that the interplay between the nonlinear response and volume plasmons enables breaking fundamental reciprocity restrictions, and coupling very efficiently an external light source to the meta-atom. The collision of an incident optical pulse with the meta-atom may be used to release the trapped light 'bit'.
将光限制在一个小空间区域内的能力在现代科学的许多领域都至关重要。在此，我们提出一种机制，可将具有非常精确能量的光的量子化“比特”存储在具有非线性光学响应的开放核壳等离子体结构（“元原子”）中。尽管捕获的光态嵌入在辐射连续体中，但其寿命不受辐射损耗的限制。有趣的是，研究表明非线性响应与体等离子体之间的相互作用能够打破基本的互易限制，并将外部光源非常有效地耦合到元原子上。入射光脉冲与元原子的碰撞可用于释放捕获的光“比特”。
