Boosting light-matter interactions in metal or dielectric nanoparticles is crucial for unleashing their full potential in a variety of photonic and optoelectronic applications.
Now, inspired by the Young’s interfence phenomenon, a research team have shown that subwavelength metal nanoparticles with separation on the order of one wavelength can form a so-called intermediate-field hybridized plasmonic mode with a character distinct from those mediated by near-field and far-field radiative effects and also beyond the conventional plasmon hybridization scenario. As a result, the absorption and scattering of light by the nanoparticles is largely enhanced at some particular wavelengths, resembling the fundamental characteristics of Young’s interference, which is physically explained through the redistribution of the Poynting vectors field and the formation of near-field subwavelength optical vortices.
This phenomenon provides a new route for enhancing the absorption and scattering of light by nano-objects for a wide range of applications in sub-diffraction imaging, solar cells and biosensing.
