Young-Mi Bahk

Controlling Terahertz Radiation with Nanoscale Metal Barriers Embedded in Nano Slot Antennas

Nanoscale metallic barriers embedded in terahertz (THz) slot antennas are shown to provide unprecedented control of the transition state arising at the crossover between the full- and half-wavelength resonant modes of such antennas. We demonstrate strong near-field coupling between two paired THz slot antennas separated by a 5 nm wide nanobarrier, almost fully inducing the shift to the resonance of the double-length slot antenna. This increases by a factor of 50 the length-scale needed to observe similar coupling strengths in conventional air-gap antennas (around 0.1 nm), making the transition state readily accessible to experiment. Our measurements are in good agreement with a quantitative theoretical modeling, which also provides a simple physical picture of our observations.

Terahertz Quantum Plasmonics of Nanoslot Antennas in Nonlinear Regime

Quantum tunneling in plasmonic nanostructures has presented an interesting aspect of incorporating quantum mechanics into classical optics. However, the study has been limited to the subnanometer gap regime. Here, we newly extend quantum plasmonics to gap widths well over 1 nm by taking advantage of the low-frequency terahertz regime. Enhanced electric fields of up to 5 V/nm induce tunneling of electrons in different arrays of ring-shaped nanoslot antennas of gap widths from 1.5 to 10 nm, which lead to a significant nonlinear transmission decrease. These observations are consistent with theoretical calculations considering terahertz-funneling-induced electron tunneling across the gap.

Plasmon Enhanced Terahertz Emission from Single Layer Graphene

Emission of terahertz radiation is observed when a single layer graphene on a glass slide is excited with femtosecond near-infrared laser pulses. Furthermore, we can enhance the amplitude of terahertz emission by surface plasmon resonance excitation on a thin gold film in the Kretschmann geometry.

Electromagnetic Saturation of Angstrom-Sized Quantum Barriers at Terahertz Frequencies.

Metal-graphene-metal hybrid structures allow angstrom-scale van der Waals gaps, across which electron tunneling occurs. We squeeze terahertz electromagnetic waves through these λ/10 000 000 gaps, accompanied by giant field enhancements. Unprecedented transmission reduction of 97% is achieved with the transient voltage across the gap saturating at 5 V. Electron tunneling facilitated by the transient electric field strongly modifies the gap index, starting a self-limiting process related to the barrier height. Our work enables greater interplay between classical optics and quantum tunneling, and provides optical indices to the van der Waals gaps.

Optical field enhancement of nanometer-sized gaps at near-infrared frequencies

We report near-field and far-field measurements of transmission through nanometer-sized gaps at near-infrared frequencies with varying the gap size from 1 nm to 10 nm. In the far-field measurements, we excluded direct transmission on the metal film surface via interferometric method. Kirchhoff integral formalism was used to relate the far-field intensity to the electric field at the nanogaps. In near-field measurements, field enhancement factors of the nanogaps were quantified by measuring transmission of the nanogaps using near-field scanning optical microscopy. All the measurements produce similar field enhancements of about ten, which we put in the context of comparing with the giant field enhancements in the terahertz regime.

Terahertz pinch harmonics enabled by single nano rods

A pinch harmonic (or guitar harmonic) is a musical note produced by lightly pressing the thumb of the picking hand upon the string immediately after it is picked [J. Chem. Educ. 84, 1287 (2007)]. This technique turns off the fundamental and all overtones except those with a node at that location. Here we present a terahertz analogue of pinch harmonics, whereby a metallic nano rod placed at a harmonic node on a terahertz nanoresonator suppresses the fundamental mode, making the higher harmonics dominant. Strikingly, a skin depth-wide nano rod placed at the mid-point turns off all resonances. Our work demonstrates that terahertz electromagnetic waves can be tailored by nanoparticles strategically positioned, paving important path towards terahertz switching and detection applications.

Tunnelling current-voltage characteristics of Angstrom gaps measured with terahertz time-domain spectroscopy.

Quantum tunnelling becomes inevitable as gap dimensions in metal structures approach the atomic length scale, and light passing through these gaps can be used to examine the quantum processes at optical frequencies. Here, we report on the measurement of the tunnelling current through a 3-Å-wide metal-graphene-metal gap using terahertz time-domain spectroscopy. By analysing the waveforms of the incident and transmitted terahertz pulses, we obtain the tunnelling resistivity and the time evolution of the induced current and electric fields in the gap and show that the ratio of the applied voltage to the tunnelling current is constant, i.e., the gap shows ohmic behaviour for the strength of the incident electric field up to 30 kV/cm. We further show that our method can be extended and applied to different types of nanogap tunnel junctions using suitable equivalent RLC circuits for the corresponding structures by taking an array of ring-shaped nanoslots as an example.

Terahertz field enhancement in asymmetric and tapered nano-gaps.

We investigate field enhancement inside metal-insulator-metal gaps with asymmetric thicknesses and tapered shapes in the terahertz regime. Finite-difference time-domain simulations were conducted for calculation of field enhancement factor. The calculation indicates that for asymmetric sample, field enhancement increases proportionally with the decrease of the thinner of the two metal film thicknesses surrounding the gap. Concomitantly, angle variation has little effect on the field enhancement if the thickness of the narrowest gap region is fixed. A model based on the capacitor concept is proposed for intuitive understanding of the phenomena.

Resonance tuning of electric field enhancement of nanogaps

We study the electric near-field enhancement of a metallic nanogap by far-field transmission measurement in the 0.6–2.3 µm wavelength range. The electric field is resonantly enhanced at the gap and the enhancement factor is quantified experimentally. The resonance condition of field enhancement can be controlled to various wavelengths by changing the gap size, which is confirmed by theoretical calculation using a mode expansion method.

Quantum dots-nanogap metamaterials fabrication by self-assembly lithography and photoluminescence studies.

We present a new and versatile technique of self-assembly lithography to fabricate a large scale Cadmium selenide quantum dots-silver nanogap metamaterials. After optical and electron microscopic characterizations of the metamaterials, we performed spatially resolved photoluminescence transmission measurements. We obtained highly quenched photoluminescence spectra compared to those from bare quantum dots film. We then quantified the quenching in terms of an average photoluminescence enhancement factor. A finite difference time domain simulation was performed to understand the role of an electric field enhancement in the nanogap over this quenching. Finally, we interpreted the mechanism of the photoluminescence quenching and proposed fabrication method of new metamaterials using our technique.