Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Benz, Felix
• Schmidt, Mikolaj K.
• Dreismann, Alexander
• Chikkaraddy, Rohit
• Zhang, Yao
• Demetriadou, Angela
• Carnegie, Cloudy
• Ohadi, Hamid
• de Nijs, Bart
• Esteban, Ruben
• Aizpurua, Javier
• Baumberg, Jeremy J.

Titel

Single-molecule optomechanics in "picocavities"

Ist Teil von

• Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science), 2016-11, Vol.354 (6313), p.726-729

Ort / Verlag

United States: American Association for the Advancement of Science

Erscheinungsjahr

2016

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

American Association for the Advancement of Science

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Trapping light with noble metal nanostructures overcomes the diffraction limit and can confine light to volumes typically on the order of 30 cubic nanometers. We found that individual atomic features inside the gap of a plasmonic nanoassembly can localize light to volumes well below 1 cubic nanometer ("picocavities"), enabling optical experiments on the atomic scale. These atomic features are dynamically formed and disassembled by laser irradiation. Although unstable at room temperature, picocavities can be stabilized at cryogenic temperatures, allowing single atomic cavities to be probed for many minutes. Unlike traditional optomechanical resonators, such extreme optical confinement yields a factor of 10⁶ enhancement of optomechanical coupling between the picocavity field and vibrations of individual molecular bonds. This work sets the basis for developing nanoscale nonlinear quantum optics on the single-molecule level.