2005/09/08 by V. Mikhailov, Mikhailov, V., Jill Elliott +10
Engineering · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Fiber Optic Sensors #FOS: Physical sciences #Optical Coatings and Gratings #Plasmonic and Surface Plasmon Research #Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el) #cond-mat.str-el
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.cond-mat/0509222
14 pages, 3 figures
arxiv created 2005/09/08 · openalex publication_date 2005/09/08 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The spectral dispersion of light is critical in applications ranging from spectroscopy to sensing and optical communication technologies. We demonstrate that ultra-high spectral dispersion can be achieved with a finite-size surface plasmon polaritonic (SPP) crystal. The 3D to 2D reduction in light diffraction dimensions due to interaction of light with collective electron modes in a metal is shown to increase the dispersion by some two orders of magnitude, due to a two-stage process: (i) conversion of the incident light to SPP Bloch waves on a nanostructured surface and (ii) Bloch waves traversing the SPP crystal boundary. This has potential for high-resolution spectrograph applications in photonics, optical communications and lab-on-a-chip, all within a planar device which is compact and easy to fabricate.