Fundamentals of Plasmonics.- Electromagnetics of Metals.- Surface Plasmon Polaritons at Metal / Insulator Interfaces.- Excitation of Surface Plasmon Polaritons at Planar Interfaces.- Imaging Surface Plasmon Polariton Propagation.- Localized Surface Plasmons.- Electromagnetic Surface Modes at Low Frequencies.- Applications.- Plasmon Waveguides.- Transmission of Radiation Through Apertures and Films.- Enhancement of Emissive Processes and Nonlinearities.- Spectroscopy and Sensing.- Metamaterials and Imaging with Surface Plasmon Polaritons.- Concluding Remarks.

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Plasmonics: Fundamentals and Applications

The unprecedented ability of nanometallic (that is, plasmonic) structures to concentrate light into deep-subwavelength volumes has propelled their use in a vast array of nanophotonics technologies and research endeavours. Plasmonic light concentrators can elegantly interface diffraction-limited dielectric optical components with nanophotonic structures. Passive and active plasmonic devices provide new pathways to generate, guide, modulate and detect light with structures that are similar in size to state-of-the-art electronic devices. With the ability to produce highly confined optical fields, the conventional rules for light-matter interactions need to be re-examined, and researchers are venturing into new regimes of optical physics. In this review we will discuss the basic concepts behind plasmonics-enabled light concentration and manipulation, make an attempt to capture the wide range of activities and excitement in this area, and speculate on possible future directions.

/pdf/plasmonics-for-extreme-light-concentration-and-manipulation-25m55spiva.pdf

Plasmonics for extreme light concentration and manipulation.

Cell membranes display a tremendous complexity of lipids and proteins designed to perform the functions cells require. To coordinate these functions, the membrane is able to laterally segregate its constituents. This capability is based on dynamic liquid-liquid immiscibility and underlies the raft concept of membrane subcompartmentalization. Lipid rafts are fluctuating nanoscale assemblies of sphingolipid, cholesterol, and proteins that can be stabilized to coalesce, forming platforms that function in membrane signaling and trafficking. Here we review the evidence for how this principle combines the potential for sphingolipid-cholesterol self-assembly with protein specificity to selectively focus membrane bioactivity.

/pdf/lipid-rafts-as-a-membrane-organizing-principle-3mxewaemed.pdf

Lipid Rafts As a Membrane-Organizing Principle

We present single-molecule, real-time sequencing data obtained from a DNA polymerase performing uninterrupted template-directed synthesis using four distinguishable fluorescently labeled deoxyribonucleoside triphosphates (dNTPs). We detected the temporal order of their enzymatic incorporation into a growing DNA strand with zero-mode waveguide nanostructure arrays, which provide optical observation volume confinement and enable parallel, simultaneous detection of thousands of single-molecule sequencing reactions. Conjugation of fluorophores to the terminal phosphate moiety of the dNTPs allows continuous observation of DNA synthesis over thousands of bases without steric hindrance. The data report directly on polymerase dynamics, revealing distinct polymerization states and pause sites corresponding to DNA secondary structure. Sequence data were aligned with the known reference sequence to assay biophysical parameters of polymerization for each template position. Consensus sequences were generated from the single-molecule reads at 15-fold coverage, showing a median accuracy of 99.3%, with no systematic error beyond fluorophore-dependent error rates.

/pdf/real-time-dna-sequencing-from-single-polymerase-molecules-3o0n2kc430.pdf

Real-Time DNA Sequencing from Single Polymerase Molecules

The term photonic crystals appears because of the analogy between electron waves in crystals and the light waves in artificial periodic dielectric structures. During the recent years the investigation of one-, two-and three-dimensional periodic structures has attracted a widespread attention of the world optics community because of great potentiality of such structures in advanced applied optical fields. The interest in periodic structures has been stimulated by the fast development of semiconductor technology that now allows the fabrication of artificial structures, whose period is comparable with the wavelength of light in the visible and infrared ranges.

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/6354/16969/00781867.pdf

Photonic crystals

Raman microscopy is a valuable approach to label-free chemical imaging. Recent advances have enabled the development of rapid methods for hyperspectral microscopy using impulsive stimulated Raman scattering (ISRS) that focus on low-frequency Raman modes of materials. The persistent challenge with Raman spectroscopic methods is low signal due to the relatively weak Raman scattering. ISRS microscopy allows for high quality hyperspectral imaging of low and fingerprint Raman vibrational frequencies but is normally subject to poor performance in the presence of optical scattering. We will present methods that solve this issue and allow for high-quality imaging when strong optical scattering is present. 

Low frequency coherent Raman imaging with high optical scattering robustness (Conference Presentation)

The device comprises a source (200) for directing a beam of light onto an eye (100) that is to be examined, a reception unit (300) for measuring the luminous flux which is sent back by the eye (100), unit (400) for fixing ocular orientation, unit (500) for separating the luminous flux which is sent back in relation to the incoming beam. An interferometer (50) is placed in between the source (200) and the eye (100) on the illuminating beam.

Device for measuring optical properties of the eye, especially the measuring the topography of the cornea and its spacing

La demande concerne un dispositif de mesure des proprietes optiques de l’œil (100) comportant: des moyens source (200) permettant de diriger un faisceau lumineux sur l’œil (100) a examiner, des moyens de reception de type shack-Hartmann (300) mesurant le flux lumineux envoye en par l’œil (100), des moyens de fixation (400) de l'orientation oculaire, des moyens de separation (500) du flux lumineux envoye en retour par rapport au faisceau entrant. Un interferometre (600) est interpose entre lesdits moyens source (200) et ledit œil (100) sur le faisceau d'illumination.

Dispositif de mesure des proprietes optiques de l'oeil

Lensless illumination single-pixel imaging with a multicore fiber (MCF) is a computational imaging technique that enables potential endoscopic observations of biological samples at cellular scale. In this work, we show that this technique is tantamount to collecting multiple symmetric rank-one projections (SROP) of a Hermitian \emph{interferometric} matrix -- a matrix encoding the spectral content of the sample image. In this model, each SROP is induced by the complex \emph{sketching} vector shaping the incident light wavefront with a spatial light modulator (SLM), while the projected interferometric matrix collects up to $O(Q^2)$ image frequencies for a $Q$-core MCF. While this scheme subsumes previous sensing modalities, such as raster scanning (RS) imaging with beamformed illumination, we demonstrate that collecting the measurements of $M$ random SLM configurations -- and thus acquiring $M$ SROPs -- allows us to estimate an image of interest if $M$ and $Q$ scale linearly (up to log factors) with the image sparsity level, hence requiring much fewer observations than RS imaging or a complete Nyquist sampling of the $Q \times Q$ interferometric matrix. This demonstration is achieved both theoretically, with a specific restricted isometry analysis of the sensing scheme, and with extensive Monte Carlo experiments. Experimental results made on an actual MCF system finally demonstrate the effectiveness of this imaging procedure on a benchmark image.

Interferometric single-pixel imaging with a multicore fiber

We have implemented a polarization-resolved coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering (CARS) microscopy, based
on the continuous variation of the incident linear polarization at the pump and Stokes wavelengths, together
with a polarized analysis of the anti-Stokes signal. In isotropic media, such as solutions, this technique can
be a powerful way to probe microscopic-scale information, such as the vibrational symmetry properties of the
molecular bonds. In ordered media, additional macroscopic-scale structural information can be obtained, such
as the orientation of the unit-cell of a crystal in 3D.

Hervé Rigneault

Papers

Low frequency coherent Raman imaging with high optical scattering robustness (Conference Presentation)

Device for measuring optical properties of the eye, especially the measuring the topography of the cornea and its spacing

Dispositif de mesure des proprietes optiques de l'oeil

Interferometric single-pixel imaging with a multicore fiber

Polarization-resolved coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering microscopy