Ultra-high-Q resonances in plasmonic metasurfaces

Plasmonic nanostructures hold promise for the realization of ultra-thin sub-wavelength devices, reducing power operating thresholds and enabling nonlinear optical functionality in metasurfaces. However, this promise is substantially undercut by absorption introduced by resistive losses, causing the metasurface community to turn away from plasmonics in favour of alternative material platforms (e.g., dielectrics) that provide weaker field enhancement, but more tolerable losses. Here, we report a plasmonic metasurface with a quality-factor (Q-factor) of 2340 in the telecommunication C band by exploiting surface lattice resonances (SLRs), exceeding the record by an order of magnitude. Additionally, we show that SLRs retain many of the same benefits as localized plasmonic resonances, such as field enhancement and strong confinement of light along the metal surface. Our results demonstrate that SLRs provide an exciting and unexplored method to tailor incident light fields, and could pave the way to flexible wavelength-scale devices for any optical resonating application. Metallic nanostructures are useful in many optical devices due to their nonlinear properties and responses to interaction with light. Here the authors demonstrate a metasurface of gold nanoparticle arrays with ultra-narrow surface lattice resonances of high quality-factor that operates in the telecommunication band.

Automated summary

Plasmonic nanostructures show great potential in ultra-thin sub-wavelength devices, but are often limited by resistive losses. By utilizing surface lattice resonances (SLRs), researchers have achieved a high quality-factor metasurface in the telecommunication band, offering exciting possibilities for manipulating incident light fields and creating flexible wavelength-scale devices.