Coherently Driven and Superdirective Antennas

Antennas are crucial elements for wireless technologies, communications and power transfer across the entire spectrum of electromagnetic waves, including radio, microwaves, THz and optics. In this paper, we review our recent achievements in two promising areas: coherently enhanced wireless power transfer (WPT) and superdirective dielectric antennas. We show that the concept of coherently enhanced WPT allows improvement of the antenna receiving efficiency by coherent excitation of the outcoupling waveguide with a backward propagating guided mode with a specific amplitude and phase. Antennas with the superdirectivity effect can increase the WPT system’s performance in another way, through tailoring of radiation diagram via engineering antenna multipoles excitation and interference of their radiation. We demonstrate a way to achieve the superdirectivity effect via higher-order multipoles excitation in a subwavelength high-index spherical dielectric resonator supporting electric and magnetic Mie multipoles. Thus, both types of antenna discussed here possess a coherent nature and can be used in modern intelligent antenna systems.

Transverse Kerker Scattering for Angstrom Localization of Nanoparticles

Angstrom precision localization of a single nanoantenna is a crucial step towards advanced nanometrology, medicine, and biophysics. Here, we show that single nanoantenna displacements down to few angstroms can be resolved with sub-angstrom precision using an all-optical method. We utilize the tranverse Kerker scattering scheme where a carefully structured light beam excites a combination of multipolar modes inside a dielectric nanoantenna, which then, upon interference, scatters directionally into the far field. We spectrally tune our scheme such that it is most sensitive to the change in directional scattering per nanoantenna displacement. Finally, we experimentally show that antenna displacement down to 3 Å is resolvable with a localization precision of 0.6 Å.

Etchant-based design of gold tip apexes for plasmon-enhanced Raman spectromicroscopy

In this paper, we gain insight into the design and optimization of plasmonic (metallic) tips prepared with dc-pulsed voltage electrochemical etching gold wires, provided that, a duty cycle is self-tuned. Physically, it means that etching electrolyte attacks the gold wire equally for all pulse lengths, regardless of its surface shape. Etchant effect on the reproducibility of a curvature radius of the tip apex is demonstrated. It means that the gold conical tips can be designed chemically with a choice of proper etchant electrolyte. It is suggested to use a microtomed binary polymer blend consisting of polyamide and low density polyethylene, as a calibration grating, for optimizing and standardizing tip-enhanced Raman scattering performance.