title: Plasmon nanomechanical coupling for nanoscale transduction.
abstract: We demonstrate plasmon-mechanical coupling in a metalized nanomechanical oscillator. A coupled surface plasmon is excited in the 25 nm wide gap between two metalized silicon nitride beams. The strong plasmonic dispersion allows the nanomechanical beams' thermal motion at a frequency of 4.4 MHz to be efficiently transduced to the optical transmission, with a measured displacement spectral density of 1.11 × 10(-13) m/Hz(1/2). When exciting the second-order plasmonic mode at λ = 780 nm we observe optical-power-induced frequency shifts of the mechanical oscillator. Our results show that novel functionality of plasmonic nanostructures can be achieved through coupling to engineered nanoscale mechanical oscillators.
authors.affiliation: Center for Nanophotonics, FOM Institute AMOLF , Science Park 104, 1098XG Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Rutger
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Thijssen
authors.forename: Ewold
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Verhagen
authors.forename: Tobias J
authors.initials: TJ
authors.lastname: Kippenberg
authors.forename: Albert
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Polman
mesh_terms: D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D055617:Micro-Electrical-Mechanical Systems / Q000295:instrumentation*; D036103:Nanotechnology / Q000295:instrumentation*; D009991:Oscillometry / Q000295:instrumentation*; D020349:Surface Plasmon Resonance / Q000295:instrumentation*; D018511:Systems Integration; D014159:Transducers