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<div><font face="Arial" size="+4" color="#000000">Seminar on<br>
</font><font face="Arial" size="+5" color="#000000"><b>Modern Optics
and Spectroscopy<br>
<br>
<br>
Gary Wiederrecht</b>,<br>
Argonne National Laboratory<br>
<br>
<i><b>Optical spectroscopy of nanoscale plasmonic heterostructures<br>
<br>
</b></i>October 25, 2005<br>
12:00 - 1:00 p.m.<br>
<br>
</font><font face="New York" size="+3" color="#000000">Abstract:<br>
<br>
</font><font face="Arial" size="+3" color="#000000">Surface plasmons
are electromagnetic modes that are present at the interface of a metal
and dielectric material. Depending upon the structure of the metal,
surface plasmons demonstrate a wide range of characteristics, such as
optical field enhancements, tunable resonances, and the ability to
propagate in films or be confined at nanoparticle defects. As a
result, surface plasmons continue to generate growing interest for new
sensor technologies, energy transport, and photonics applications. In
many cases, the most interesting advantages of surface plasmons lie in
the optical near-field, significantly below the diffraction limit of
conventional optics in at least one dimension. This requires novel
methods for imaging the spatial profile and propagation properties of
surface plasmons, as well as novel spectroscopies for studying
photochemistry of heterostructured materials in the near-field. In
this talk, recent efforts in our group for the imaging and
spectroscopy of plasmonic heterostructures are discussed, specifically
applied to plasmonic continuum spectroscopy, metal nanoparticle
photoluminescence, and coherent coupling of molecular excitons to
surface plasmons</font></div>
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