title: All-optical ultrafast control of beaming through a single sub-wavelength aperture in a metal film.
abstract: We propose an ultrafast all-optical technique to control and beam the light emerging from a sub-wavelength slit in a planar gold film by exciting a transient grating in the area around the slit. A FDTD model is used to show how excitation of surface plasmon polaritons by the grating governs the beaming process. Both the grating and the beaming effect are shown to decay on a picosecond time-scale. An on-off contrast of 5 dB is obtained for the beaming, with a divergence angle of only 2.4 degrees.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Institute for Optical Sciences, University of Toronto, Toronto, M5S 1A7 Canada. m.swillam@utoronto.ca
authors.forename: Mohamed A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Swillam
authors.forename: Nir
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Rotenberg
authors.forename: Henry M
authors.initials: HM
authors.lastname: van Driel