Plasmonic sensing
with nanocubes

The propagation of light in a slit between metals is known to give rise to guided modes. When the slit is of nanometric size, plasmonic effects must be taken into account, since most of the mode propagates inside the metal. Indeed, light experiences an important slowing-down in the slit, the resulting mode being called gap-plasmon. Hence, a metallic structure presenting a nanometric slit can act as a light trap, i.e. light will accumulate in a reduced space and lead to very intense, localized fields. We study the generation of gap plasmons by various configurations of silver nanocubes separated from a gold substrate by a dielectric layer, thus forming a narrow slit under the cube. When excited from above, this configuration is able to support gap-plasmon modes which, once trapped, will keep bouncing back and forth inside the cavity.

We exploit statistical learning methods for the goal-oriented inverse design of cube size, dielectric and gold layer thickness, as well as gap size between cubes in a dimer configuration.

In a second step, we consider more realistic configurations based on a disordered distribution of cubes. This study is conducted in collaboration with Antoine Moreau at Institut Pascal (CNRS).