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Optical-field-controlled photoemission from plasmonic nanoparticles

Nature Physics volume 13, pages 335–339 (2017)Cite this article

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Abstract

At high intensities, light–matter interactions are controlled by the electric field of the exciting light. For instance, when an intense laser pulse interacts with an atomic gas, individual cycles of the incident electric field ionize gas atoms and steer the resulting attosecond-duration electrical wavepackets1,2. Such field-controlled light–matter interactions form the basis of attosecond science and have recently expanded from gases to solid-state nanostructures3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18. Here, we extend these field-controlled interactions to metallic nanoparticles supporting localized surface plasmon resonances. We demonstrate strong-field, carrier-envelope-phase-sensitive photoemission from arrays of tailored metallic nanoparticles, and we show the influence of the nanoparticle geometry and the plasmon resonance on the phase-sensitive response. Additionally, from a technological standpoint, we push strong-field light–matter interactions to the chip scale. We integrate our plasmonic nanoparticles and experimental geometry in compact, micro-optoelectronic devices that operate out of vacuum and under ambient conditions.

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Figure 1: Device layout and basic operation.
Figure 2: Strong-field, CEP-sensitive photoemission currents.
Figure 3: CEP behaviours.

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Acknowledgements

We thank O. D. Mücke for helpful comments and J. Daley for assistance in device fabrication. This work was supported by the United States Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) through grant FA9550-12-1-0499, the Center for Free-Electron Laser Science at DESY, and The Hamburg Center for Ultrafast Imaging: Structure, Dynamics and Control of Matter at the Atomic Scale, an excellence cluster of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. W.P.P. acknowledges earlier support from an NSF graduate research fellowship; P.D.K. acknowledges support from an NDSEG graduate fellowship; and R.G.H. acknowledges support for the device fabrication work from the Center for Excitonics, an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences under award number DE-SC0001088. We thank A. Chu and J. Wanapun for additional support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics and Center for Ultrafast Imaging, University of Hamburg, Luruper Chaussee 149, 22761 Hamburg, Germany

    William P. Putnam & Franz X. Kärtner

  2. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Research Laboratory of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA

    William P. Putnam, Richard G. Hobbs, Phillip D. Keathley, Karl K. Berggren & Franz X. Kärtner

  3. Centre for Research on Adaptive Nanostructures and Nanodevices (CRANN), Advanced Materials and Bio-Engineering Research Centre (AMBER), and School of Chemistry, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland

    Richard G. Hobbs

  4. Center for Free-Electron Laser Science (CFEL) and Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY), Notkestraße 85, 22607 Hamburg, Germany

    Franz X. Kärtner

Authors
  1. William P. Putnam
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Contributions

W.P.P. and F.X.K. conceived of the experimental concept. W.P.P. and R.G.H. fabricated the devices. W.P.P. constructed the laser source and experimental apparatus and carried out the measurements. W.P.P. developed the model, and W.P.P., R.G.H., P.D.K., K.K.B. and F.X.K. interpreted the results and composed the manuscript.

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Correspondence to William P. Putnam.

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Putnam, W., Hobbs, R., Keathley, P. et al. Optical-field-controlled photoemission from plasmonic nanoparticles. Nature Phys 13, 335–339 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys3978

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