Electrically driven optical antennas
| Autor: | Monika Emmerling, Martin Kamp, René Kullock, Jord C. Prangsma, Johannes Kern, Bert Hecht |
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| Rok vydání: | 2015 |
| Předmět: |
Physics
Photon business.industry Transmitter Shot noise FOS: Physical sciences Physics::Optics Polarization (waves) Atomic and Molecular Physics and Optics Electronic Optical and Magnetic Materials Optics Broadband Optoelectronics Quantum efficiency Light emission business Quantum tunnelling Optics (physics.optics) Physics - Optics |
| Zdroj: | Nature Photonics. 9:582-586 |
| ISSN: | 1749-4893 1749-4885 |
| DOI: | 10.1038/nphoton.2015.141 |
| Popis: | Researchers demonstrate an electrically driven nanoscale transmitter based on the broadband quantum shot noise of electrons tunnelling across a feed gap. Unlike radiowave antennas, so far optical nanoantennas cannot be fed by electrical generators. Instead, they are driven by light1 or indirectly via excited discrete states in active materials2,3 in their vicinity. Here we demonstrate the direct electrical driving of an in-plane optical antenna by the broadband quantum-shot noise of electrons tunnelling across its feed gap. The spectrum of the emitted photons is determined by the antenna geometry and can be tuned via the applied voltage. Moreover, the direction and polarization of the light emission are controlled by the antenna resonance, which also improves the external quantum efficiency by up to two orders of magnitude. The one-material planar design offers facile integration of electrical and optical circuits and thus represents a new paradigm for interfacing electrons and photons at the nanometre scale, for example for on-chip wireless communication and highly configurable electrically driven subwavelength photon sources. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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