Latest article: imaging the Gouy phase shift in photonic nanojets
Recently released in Optics Letters, our article reports on the use of a commercial wavefront sensor to directly monitor and image the Gouy phase shift in photonic nanojets created by micrometer-sized dielectric spheres.
Compared to previous demonstrations, our approach does not require interferometric heterodyne or homodyne detections. Just plug-in the Sid4Bio camera from Phasics on the left/right port of the microscope, run the software, and get the phase image.
Such direct phase imaging using a commercial wavefront sensor should find applications in microscopy, diffractive optics, optical trapping, and point spread function engineering.
Mosaic website updated
Several webpages regarding recent research projects have been updated, see the links below or on the left column:
- Nanoantenna enhanced fluorescence
- Plasmonic controlled emission
- Photonic crystal fiber probes
Dive into a single nanoaperture
Metal subwavelength apertures have turned into essential devices to manipulate light at the nanoscale. However, experimentally characterizing the amplification brought by the nanoaperture on the excitation intensity remains a scientific and technical challenge. Such characterization is highly needed to fully understand and optimize the aperture’s design.
Our recent Optics Express manuscript describes a novel experimental method to directly characterize the aperture amplification on the excitation field independently on the emission process. We take advantage of the intrinsic nonlinear dependence of the fluorescence signal on the excitation intensity.
The most funny part is that we report enhanced nonlinear light-matter interaction using only a HeNe laser with less than 1mW CW power.
Fun with Plasmonics: DIY Lycurgus cup
The Lycurgus cup is one the famous examples demonstrating the amazing optical properties of noble metal nanoparticles. Now with minimum chemistry knowledge, you can synthetize your own gold particles (or buy them directly on line) to realize your own Lycurgus cup.
Image at 90° illumination: the gold particles scatter light with orange color.
Image in transmission: the flask looks almost transparent with slight purple color.
