title: Squeezing visible light waves into a 3-nm-thick and 55-nm-long plasmon cavity.
abstract: We demonstrate controlled squeezing of visible light waves into nanometer-sized optical cavities. The light is perpendicularly confined in a few-nanometer-thick SiO2 film sandwiched between Au claddings in the form of surface plasmon polaritons and exhibits Fabry-Perot resonances in a longitudinal direction. As the thickness of the dielectric core is reduced, the plasmon wavelength becomes shorter; then a smaller cavity is realized. A dispersion relation down to a surface plasmon wavelength of 51 nm for a red light, which is less than 8% of the free-space wavelength, was experimentally observed. Any obvious breakdowns of the macroscopic electromagnetics based on continuous dielectric media were not disclosed for 3-nm-thick cores.
authors.affiliation: Materials Engineering Laboratory, National Institute for Materials Science, 1-2-1 Sengen, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-0047, Japan. MIYAZAKI.Hideki@nims.go.jp
authors.forename: Hideki T
authors.initials: HT
authors.lastname: Miyazaki
authors.forename: Yoichi
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Kurokawa
mesh_terms: D008027:Light; D049329:Nanostructures / Q000737:chemistry*; D020349:Surface Plasmon Resonance / Q000379:methods*