Plasmon resonances on gold nanowires directly drawn in a step-index fiber

We report the successful production of high-quality gold wires, with diameters down to 260 nm, by direct fiber drawing from a gold-filled fused-silica cane. The stack-and-draw technique makes it straightforward to incorporate a conventional step-index core, adjacent to the gold wire, in the cane. In the drawn fiber, strong coupling of light from the glass core to SPP resonances on the gold wire is observed at specific well-defined wavelengths. Such embedded wires have many potential applications, for example, as nanoscale electrodes, in nonlinear optical plasmonics, and as near-field scanning optical microscope tips. (C) 2010 Optical Society of America