A study of plasmonic enhanced transmission effects in nano-optics

This project was a numerical study of the behavior of surface plasmons in nano-systems, focusing on the interaction between plasmons, light, and nano-scale structures such as nano-scale metallic wires and quantum wires/dots. The primary results of the project included: a) the demonstration of the use of surface plasmons to modify the spatial coherence of a light wave, b) the demonstration of a feasible plasmonic superresolved readout system, and c) the demonstration of a “Plasmonic Zeno effect”, in which the attenuation of a light wave in metal is suppressed by breaking up the metal into a collection of structured layers. The integration of quantum wire/dot effects with the plasmonic simulations proved to be harder than expected, in large part due to the lack of accurate and simple quantum dot models