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    Importance of substrates for the visibility of "dark" plasmonic modes
    (Washington, DC : Soc., 2020) Fiedler, Saskia; Raza, Søren; Ai, Ruoqi; Wang, Jianfang; Busch, Kurt; Stenger, Nicolas; Mortensen, N. Asger; Wolff, Christian
    Dark plasmonic modes have interesting properties, including longer lifetimes and narrower linewidths than their radiative counterpart, and little to no radiative losses. However, they have not been extensively studied yet due to their optical inaccessibility. In this work, we systematically investigated the dark radial breathing modes (RBMs) in monocrystalline gold nanodisks, specifically their outcoupling behavior into the far-field by cathodoluminescence spectroscopy. Increasing the substrate thickness resulted in an up to 4-fold enhanced visibility. This is attributed to breaking the mirror symmetry by the high-index substrate, creating an effective dipole moment. Furthermore, the resonance energy of the dark RMBs can be easily tuned by varying the nanodisk diameter, making them promising candidates for nanophotonic applications. © 2020 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement
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    Quasi-monocrystalline silicon for low-noise end mirrors in cryogenic gravitational-wave detectors
    (College Park, MD : APS, 2022) Kiessling, Frank M.; Murray, Peter G.; Kinley-Hanlon, Maya; Buchovska, Iryna; Ervik, Torunn K.; Graham, Victoria; Hough, Jim; Johnston, Ross; Pietsch, Mike; Rowan, Sheila; Schnabel, Roman; Tait, Simon C.; Steinlechner, Jessica; Martin, Iain W.
    Mirrors made of silicon have been proposed for use in future cryogenic gravitational-wave detectors, which will be significantly more sensitive than current room-temperature detectors. These mirrors are planned to have diameters of ≈50 cm and a mass of ≈200 kg. While single-crystalline float-zone silicon meets the requirements of low optical absorption and low mechanical loss, the production of this type of material is restricted to sizes much smaller than required. Here we present studies of silicon produced by directional solidification. This material can be grown as quasi-monocrystalline ingots in sizes larger than currently required. We present measurements of a low room-temperature and cryogenic mechanical loss comparable with float-zone silicon. While the optical absorption of our test sample is significantly higher than required, the low mechanical loss motivates research into further absorption reduction in the future. While it is unclear if material pure enough for the transmissive detector input mirrors can be achieved, an absorption level suitable for the highly reflective coated end mirrors seems realistic. Together with the potential to produce samples much larger than ≈50 cm, this material may be of great benefit for realizing silicon-based gravitational-wave detectors.