Measurement of Scattering Nonlinearities from a Single Plasmonic Nanoparticle

Abstract

Plasmonics, which are based on the collective oscillation of electrons due to light excitation, involve strongly enhanced local electric fields and thus have potential applications in nonlinear optics, which requires extraordinary optical intensity. One of the most studied nonlinearities in plasmonics is nonlinear absorption, including saturation and reverse saturation behaviors. Although scattering and absorption in nanoparticles are closely correlated by the Mie theory, there has been no report of nonlinearities in plasmonic scattering until very recently.Last year, not only saturation, but also reverse saturation of scattering in an isolated plasmonic particle was demonstrated for the first time. The results showed that saturable scattering exhibits clear wavelength dependence, which seems to be directly linked to the localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR). Combined with the intensity-dependent measurements, the results suggest the possibility of a common mechanism underlying the nonlinear behaviors of scattering and absorption. These nonlinearities of scattering from a single gold nanosphere (GNS) are widely applicable, including in super-resolution microscopy and optical switches.In this paper, it is described in detail how to measure nonlinearity of scattering in a single GNP and how to employ the super-resolution technique to enhance the optical imaging resolution based on saturable scattering. This discovery features the first super-resolution microscopy based on nonlinear scattering, which is a novel non-bleaching contrast method that can achieve a resolution as low as l/8 and will potentially be useful in biomedicine and material studies. Video LinkThe video component of this article can be found at

Enhancing the spatial resolution of far-field optical imaging without photobleaching

“…A full description of our experimental procedure for this plasmonic SAX technique has recently been published. 10 Our experimental results also indicate that nonlinear scattering arises when the excitation laser wavelength overlaps with the plasmonic band of the nanoparticles. For gold nanospheres with diameters of 40-100nm, this overlap occurs in the 500-600nm range.…”