Jerome Wenger NanoBioPhotonics

Optimizing the resonant properties of complex optical antennas is often a complex and time-consuming task. To ease the computational process and provide physical guidelines to the design optimization, we introduced in a publication in Physical Review A (highlighted as Rapid Publication) the so-called Weierstrass factorization theorem as a new tool in nanophotonics. We demonstrated that the scattering matrix can be decomposed exactly into a set of Lorentzian resonances over an arbitrary broad frequency range, and that the finding of these anomalies accurately determines all the scattering properties. This powerful approach does not require any fitting parameters and can take into account consistently an arbitrary number of modes. It can be applied to a broad range of cases, as we will show in forthcoming papers.

Juan de Torres (Spain) has joined the ERC ExtendFRET team since the beginning of September. After a successful master on dynamic light microscopy at the Fresnel Institute last July, Juan is starting his PhD on experimental nanophotonics.

Quite dusty days...

In the July issue of Nature Nanotechnology, read the News & Views about our recent work by Prof. Philip Tinnefeld.

"The combination of a plasmonic nanoantenna and a nanoaperture has merged fluorescence enhancement and spatial confinement to enable single-molecule detection at biologically relevant concentrations."