title: Turning the corner: efficient energy transfer in bent plasmonic nanoparticle chain waveguides.
abstract: For integrating and multiplexing of subwavelength plasmonic waveguides with other optical and electric components, complex architectures such as junctions with sharp turns are necessary. However, in addition to intrinsic losses, bending losses severely limit plasmon propagation. In the current work, we demonstrate that propagation of surface plasmon polaritons around 90° turns in silver nanoparticle chains occurs without bending losses. Using a far-field fluorescence method, bleach-imaged plasmon propagation (BlIPP), which creates a permanent map of the plasmonic near-field through bleaching of a fluorophore coated on top of a plasmonic waveguide, we measured propagation lengths at 633 nm for straight and bent silver nanoparticle chains of 8.0 ± 0.5 and 7.8 ± 0.4 μm, respectively. These propagation lengths were independent of the input polarization. We furthermore show that subradiant plasmon modes yield a longer propagation length compared to energy transport via excitation of super-radiant modes.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry and †Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Laboratory for Nanophotonics, Rice University , Houston, Texas 77005, United States.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Solis
authors.forename: Aniruddha
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Paul
authors.forename: Jana
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Olson
authors.forename: Liane S
authors.initials: LS
authors.lastname: Slaughter
authors.forename: Pattanawit
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Swanglap
authors.forename: Wei-Shun
authors.initials: WS
authors.lastname: Chang
authors.forename: Stephan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Link
mesh_terms: D017076:Computer-Aided Design; D004735:Energy Transfer; D008027:Light; D053758:Nanoparticles / Q000737:chemistry*; D012031:Refractometry; D012542:Scattering, Radiation; D012834:Silver / Q000737:chemistry; D020349:Surface Plasmon Resonance
chemical_list: D012834:Silver