Unraveling the Mysteries of Intense Femtosecond Pulse Propagation

This novel energy-transfer process represents a new dimension to the dipole-surface problem with several potential applications (enhanced photodetection being one example). Plasma resonances supported by metal nanoparticles are known to produce important optical effects (such as SERS), due to strongly-enhanced local electromagnetic fields. The peaks seen in the figure are likely associated with enhanced local fields occurring at the new resonances of the composite particle-waveguide system. These structures may be capable of enhancing multifrequency nonlinear effects (such as secondharmonic generation) to a degree exceeding previous observations by several orders of magnitude.