Frequency comb transferred by surface plasmon resonance

• Published in: Nature communications Vol. 7; no. 1; p. 10685
• Main Authors: Geng, Xiao Tao, Chun, Byung Jae, Seo, Ji Hoon, Seo, Kwanyong, Yoon, Hana, Kim, Dong-Eon, Kim, Young-Jin, Kim, Seungchul
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Nature Publishing Group 22.02.2016; Nature Portfolio
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/ncomms10685

Frequency combs, millions of narrow-linewidth optical modes referenced to an atomic clock, have shown remarkable potential in time/frequency metrology, atomic/molecular spectroscopy and precision LIDARs. Applications have extended to coherent nonlinear Raman spectroscopy of molecules and quantum metrology for entangled atomic qubits. Frequency combs will create novel possibilities in nano-photonics and plasmonics; however, its interrelation with surface plasmons is unexplored despite the important role that plasmonics plays in nonlinear spectroscopy and quantum optics through the manipulation of light on a subwavelength scale. Here, we demonstrate that a frequency comb can be transformed to a plasmonic comb in plasmonic nanostructures and reverted to the original frequency comb without noticeable degradation of <6.51 × 10(-19) in absolute position, 2.92 × 10(-19) in stability and 1 Hz in linewidth. The results indicate that the superior performance of a well-defined frequency comb can be applied to nanoplasmonic spectroscopy, quantum metrology and subwavelength photonic circuits.