Using Plasmonics to
Shape Light Beams
Federico Capasso, Nanfang Yu,
Ertugrul Cubukcu and
Elizabeth Smythe
Plasmonic structures shape
semiconductor laser beams.
Left: A plasmonic collimator spreads out radiation
from the sub-wavelength
aperture into surface waves
that are diffracted by the
metallic grating to produce
a low divergence beam.
Right: A resonant optical
antenna concentrates most
of the laser light into a tens-of-nanometers size spot
defined by the gap.
Illustration by Nanfang Yu
22 | OPN May 2009
1047-6938/09/05/0022/6-$15.00 ©OSA
