We experimentally demonstrate that hybrid plasmon-photon modes exist in a silver-coated glass bottle resonator. The bottle resonator is realized in a glass fiber with a smoothly varying diameter, which is subsequently coated with a rhodamine 800-dye doped acryl-glass layer and a 30 nm thick silver layer. We show by means of photoluminescence experiments supported by electromagnetic simulations that the rhodamine 800 photoluminescence excites hybrid plasmon-photon modes in such a bottle resonator, which provide a plasmon-type field enhancement at the outer silver surface and exhibit quality factors as high as 1000.

This work is related to an earlier publication [Schwaiger et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 163903 (2009)], where we demonstrated by means of fiber-based transmission measurements that rolled-up Ag-(In)GaAs multilayers represent three-dimensional metamaterials with a plasma edge which is tunable over the visible and near-infrared regime by changing the thickness ratio of Ag and (In) GaAs, and predicted by means of finite-difference time-domain simulations that hyperlensing occurs at this frequency-tunable plasma edge. In the present work we develop a method to measure reflection curves on these structures and find that they correspond to the same tunable plasma edge. We find that retrieving the effective parameters from transmission and reflection data fails, because our realized metamaterials exceed the single-layer thicknesses of 5 nm, which we analyze to be the layer thickness limit for the applicability of effective parameter retrieval. We show that our realized structures nevertheless have the functionality of an effective metamaterial by supplying a detailed finite-difference time-domain study which compares light propagation through our realized structure (17-nm-thick Ag layers and 34-nm-thick GaAs layers) and light propagation through an idealized structure of the same total thickness but with very thin layers [2-nm-thick Ag layers and 4-nm-thick (In) GaAs layers]. In particular, our simulations predict broadband hyperlensing covering a large part of the visible spectrum for both the idealized and our realized structures.

We propose and demonstrate the fabrication of a three-dimensional fishnet metamaterial by utilizing rolled-up nanotechnology. It consists of 6 alternating layers of silver and (In)GaAs with an array of subwavelength holes “drilled” by focused ion beams. By means of finite-integration technique simulations, we show that the fabricated structure is a single-negative material possessing a negative real part of the refractive index in the near-infrared regime. We show that the fabricated material can be made double negative by slightly changing the size of the holes.

We investigate metamaterials based on arrays of rolled-up gold/(In)GaAs microrolls. By finite-integration-technique simulations we show that these arrays interact resonantly with the magnetic component of an electromagnetic field and exhibit a negative effective permeability at terahertz frequencies. We find a strong dependence of the resonance frequency on small variations in the winding number n. We show that this dependence can be removed, if desired, by applying an additional slit into the metal layer of the tube.

We report on strong coupling between surface plasmon polaritons on a thin silver film and laser dye Rhodamine 800. Attenuated total reflection measurements reveal that the pure surface plasmon polaritons interact with the Rhodamine 800 absorption lines exhibiting pronounced anticrossings in the dispersion relation. We show that the corresponding energy gap can be tailored by the concentration of dye molecules in the dielectric matrix between 50 meV and 70 meV. We can well model our data by a classical transfer matrix approach as well as by a quantum mechanical coupled oscillator ansatz.

We investigate the excitation of surface plasmon polaritons on silver tubes with finite-difference time-domain simulations. These surface plasmon polaritons exhibit azimuthal whispering gallery modes with quality factors in the hundreds. We show that the high quality factors arise from the coupling of the surface plasmon modes to photonic modes inside the tube. We examine the influence of a gain material on the quality factors and find that for material data of rhodamine 6G, the quality factors are enhanced significantly up to values of 3000.

We experimentally demonstrate that the transmission through rolled-up metal/semiconductor hyperlenses can be enhanced at desired frequencies utilizing Fabry-Pérot resonances. By means of finite difference time domain simulations, we prove that hyperlensing occurs at frequencies of high transmission.

We demonstrate gain in a three-dimensional metal/semiconductor metamaterial by the integration of optically active semiconductor quantum structures. The rolling-up of a metallic structure on top of strained semiconductor layers containing a quantum well allows us to achieve a tightly bent superlattice consisting of alternating layers of lossy metallic and amplifying gain material. We show that the transmission through the superlattice can be enhanced by exciting the quantum well optically under both pulsed or continuous wave excitation. This points out that our structures can be used as a starting point for arbitrary three-dimensional metamaterials including gain.

We propose and realize a novel concept of a self-organized three-dimensional metamaterial with a plasma frequency in the visible regime. We utilize the concept of self-rolling strained layers to roll up InGaAs/GaAs/Ag multilayers with multiple rotations. The walls of the resulting tubes represent a radial superlattice with a tunable layer thickness ratio and lattice constant. We show that the plasma frequency of the radial superlattice can be tuned over a broad range in the visible and near infrared by changing the layer thickness ratio in good agreement with an effective metamaterial description. Finite difference time domain simulations reveal that the rolled-up radial superlattices can be used as hyperlenses in the visible.

We investigate plasmon excitations on thin gold films coated with PMMA grating structures both, in the near field, using a scanning near field optical microscope (SNOM) and in the far field. The dependence of the size and energetic position of a bandgap on structural parameters like grating height and filling factor f is examined. With far field reflection measurements we discover a shift of the bandgap to lower energies with increasing f and we noticed a significant change in the bandgap's size which can be tuned with structural parameters.