title: Absorption enhancement by matching the cross-section of plasmonic nanowires to the field structure of tightly focused beams.
abstract: Nanostructured materials, designed for enhanced light absorption, are receiving increased scientific and technological interest. In this paper we propose a physical criterion for designing the cross-sectional shape of plasmonic nanowires for improved absorption of a given tightly focused illumination. The idea is to design a shape which increases the matching between the nanowire plasmon resonance field and the incident field. As examples, we design nanowire shapes for two illumination cases: a tightly focused plane wave and a tightly focused beam containing a line singularity. We show that properly shaped and positioned silver nanowires that occupy a relatively small portion of the beam-waist area can absorb up to 65% of the total power of the incident beam.
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical Engineering, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Technion City, Haifa, Israel. alexn@tx.technion.ac.il
authors.forename: Alexander
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Normatov
authors.forename: Boris
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Spektor
authors.forename: Yehuda
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Leviatan
authors.forename: Joseph
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Shamir
mesh_terms: D000042:Absorption; D017076:Computer-Aided Design; D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D007909:Lenses; D008027:Light; D008029:Lighting / Q000295:instrumentation*; D043942:Nanotubes / Q000737:chemistry*; D012542:Scattering, Radiation; D020349:Surface Plasmon Resonance / Q000295:instrumentation*