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Deutsche Physikalische Gessellschaft IOP Institute of Physics

Optical nanoswitch: an engineered plasmonic nanoparticle with extreme parameters and giant anisotropy

Andrea Alù1,2 and Nader Engheta1

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Naturally available optical materials are known to provide a wide variety of electric responses, spanning from positive to negative permittivity values. In contrast, owing to drastically modified conduction properties at the microscopic level, at such high frequencies magnetism and conductivity are very challenging to realize. This implies that extreme (high or low) values of permittivity, although highly desirable for a wide range of optical applications, are difficult to realize in practice. Here, we suggest the design of an engineered resonant nanoparticle composed of two conjoined hemispheres, whose optical response may be changed at will from an ideal electric conductor to an ideal magnetic conductor. Near the nanoparticle internal resonant frequency, we derive a closed-form solution that describes the electromagnetic response of this nanoparticle, showing how its light interaction may become dramatically dependent on the local field polarization, passing through all possible impedance values (from zero to infinity) by a simple mechanical or polarization rotation. Considering realistic frequency dispersion and loss in optical materials, we further show that these concepts may be applied to different geometries, with possibility for future experimental feasibility. We forecast various applications of this geometry as an optical nanoswitch, a novel nanocircuit element and as a building block for novel optical metamaterials.


PACS

85.35.-p Nanoelectronic devices

42.79.Ta Optical computers, logic elements, interconnects, switches; neural networks

78.67.Bf Nanocrystals and nanoparticles

42.70.-a Optical materials

61.46.Df Structure of nanocrystals and nanoparticles ("colloidal" quantum dots but not gate-isolated embedded quantum dots)

Subjects

Electronics and devices

Optics, quantum optics and lasers

Nanoscale science and low-D systems

Dates

Issue 1 (January 2009)

Received 15 October 2008

Published 20 January 2009



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