Non-geometrical effects on Gaussian beams transmitting through a thin dielectric slab

It is shown that a Gaussian light beam transmitting through a planar thin dielectric slab in the air undergoes four different effects, i.e. lateral Goos-Hanchen-like （GHL） displacement, angular deflection, width modification and longitudinal focal shift as compared with the results predicted by geometrical optics. According to the Taylor expansion of the exponent of transmission coefficient when expressed as an exponential form, the lateral GHL displacement and the angular deflection are the first-order effects and can be negative or positive. The width modification and the longitudinal focal shift are the second-order effects and can also be positive or negative. Owing to the waist-width dependent term, the non-geometrical effects of transmitted beam are not identical with the non-specular effects of reflected beam. The conditions for the validity of those effects are suggested and numerical simulations are also given.     

Large negative Goos-Hainchen shift from a wedge-shaped thin film

The analytical expression for the complex amplitude of light reflected from a wedge-shaped thin film is derived. For plane wave incidence, a simple ray tracing approach is used to calculate Goos-Hanchen （GH） shifts; and for non-plane wave incidence, for example, a Gaussian beam, the angular spectrum approach of plane wave is used in simulation. The two approaches predict that a wedge-shaped thin film can produce large negative longitudinal GH shifts. Although the reflectivity is small near the condition of resonance, the large negative GH shifts can be more easily detected in comparison with the shift from a plane-parallel film in vacuum.     

Graphene Tamm plasmon-induced giant Goos–H?nchen shift at terahertz frequencies

In this Letter, we have shown that a giant Goos–H?nchen shift of a light beam reflected at terahertz frequencies can be achieved by using a composite structure, where monolayer graphene is coated on one-dimensional photonic crystals separated by a dielectric slab. This giant Goos–H?nchen shift originates from the enhancement of the electrical field, owing to the excitation of optical Tamm states at the interface between the graphene and onedimensional photonic crystal. It is shown that the Goos–H?nchen shift in this structure can be significantly enlarged negatively and can be switched from negative to positive due to the tunability of graphene's conductivity. Moreover, the Goos–H?nchen shift of the proposed structure is sensitive to the relaxation time of graphene and the thickness of the top layer, making this structure a good candidate for a dynamic tunable optical shift device in the terahertz regime.     

Wavelength dependence four-wave mixing spectroscopy in a micrometric atomic vapour

This paper presents a theoretical study of wavelength dependence four-wave-mixing (FWM) spectroscopy in a micrometric thin atomic vapour. It compares three cases termed as mismatched case Ⅰ, matched case and mismatched case Ⅱ for the probe wavelength less, equal and greater than the pump wavelength respectively. It finds that Dickenarrowing can overcome width broadening induced by Doppler effects and polarisation interference of thermal atoms, and high resolution FWM spectra can be achieved both in matched and mismatched wavelength for many cases. It also finds that the magnitude of the FWM signal can be dramatically modified to be suppressed or to be enhanced in comparison with that of matched wavelength in mismatched case Ⅰ or Ⅱ. The width narrowing and the magnitude suppression or enhancement can be demonstrated by considering enhanced contribution of slow atoms induced by atom-wall collision and transient effect of atom-light interaction in a micrometric thin vapour.     

Giant transmission Goos–Hnchen shift in surface plasmon polaritons excitation and its physical origin

Excitation of surface plasmon polaritons(SPPs) propagating at the interface between a dielectric medium and a silver thin film by a focused Gaussian beam in a classical Kretschmann prism setup is studied theoretically. We find that the center of the transmitted Gaussian evanescent wave has a giant lateral shift relative to the incident Gaussian beam center for a wide range of incident angle and Gaussian beam wavelength to excite SPPs, which can be more than two orders of magnitude larger than the silver film thickness. The phenomenon is closely related with the conventional Goos–Hnchen effect for total internal reflection of light beam, and it is called the transmission Goos–Hnchen shift. We find that this lateral shift depends heavily on the excitation wavelength, incident angle, and the silver layer thickness. Finite-difference time-domain simulations show that this transmission Goos–Hnchen shift is induced by a unique dynamical process of excitation, transport, and leakage of SPPs.     

Enhanced photoluminescence of CdSe quantum dots by the coupling of Ag nanocube and Ag film

The coupling of local surface plasmon(LSP) of nanoparticle and surface plasmon(SP) mode produced by metal film can lead to the enhanced electromagnetic field, which has an important application in enhancing the fluorescence of quantum dots(QDs). Herein, the Ag nanocube and Ag film are used to enhance the fluorescence of CdSe QDs. The enhancement is found to relate to the sizes of the Ag nanocube and the thickness of the Ag film. Moreover, we also present the fluorescence enhancement caused by only SP. The result shows that the coupling between metal nanoparticles and metal film can realize larger field enhancement. Numerical simulation verifies that a nanocube can localize a strong electric field around its corner. All the results indicate that the fluorescence of QDs can be efficiently improved by optimizing the parameters of Ag film and Ag cubes.     

Measurement of absolute phase Shift on reflection of thin films using white-light spectral interferometry

A novel method to measure the absolute phase shift on reflection of thin film is presented utilizing a white-light interferometer in spectral domain. By applying Fourier transformation to the recorded spectral interference signal, we retrieve the spectral phase function Ф, which is induced by three parts： the path length difference in air L, the effective thickness of slightly dispersive cube beam splitter Teff and the nonlinear phase function due to multi-reflection of the thin film structure. We utilize the fact that the overall optical path difference （OPD） is linearly dependent on the refractive index of the beam splitter to determine both L and Teff. The spectral phase shift on reflection of thin film structure can be obtained by subtracting these two parts from Ф. We show theoretically and experimentally that our new method can provide a simple and fast solution in calculating the absolute spectral phase function of optical thin films, while still maintaining high accuracy.     

Giant Goos–Hnchen shifts of waveguide coupled long-range surface plasmon resonance mode

A hybrid structure based on a planar waveguide(PWG) mode coupling a long-range surface plasmon resonance(LRSPR) mode is proposed to enhance the GH shift. Both the PWG mode and LRSPR mode can be in strong resonance, and these two modes can be coupled together due to the normal-mode splitting. The largest GH shift of PWG-coupled LRSPR structure is 4156 times that of the incident beam, which is 23 times and 3.6 times that of the surface plasmon resonance(SPR) structure and the LRSPR structure, respectively. As a GH shift sensor, the highest sensitivity of 4.68 × 10~7λ is realized in the coupled structure. Compared with the sensitivity of the traditional SPR structure, the sensitivity of our structure is increased by more than 2 orders, which theoretically indicates that the proposed configuration can be applied to the field of high-sensitivity sensors in the future.     

Control of Beam Halo-Chaos Based on Self-Field-Intensity of Particle Beam

The KV beam through an axisymmetric periodic-focusing magnetic field is studied using the particle-core model. A new variable of the self-field-intensity of particle beam is selected, and an idea of self-field feedback controller is proposed based on the variable for controlling the halo-chaos. We perform multiparticle simulation to control the halo by using the self-field feedback controller. The numerical results show that the halo-chaos and its regeneration can be eliminated effectively, and that the density uniformity can be found at the centre of beam as long as an appropriate control method is chosen. The control method may be operated in the experiment, because field intensity measurement is easy.     

A new analytical model of high voltage silicon on insulator （SOI） thin film devices

A new analytical model of high voltage silicon on insulator (SOI) thin film devices is proposed, and a formula of silicon critical electric field is derived as a function of silicon film thickness by solving a 2D Poisson equation from an effective ionization rate, with a threshold energy taken into account for electron multiplying. Unlike a conventional silicon critical electric field that is constant and independent of silicon film thickness, the proposed silicon critical electric field increases sharply with silicon film thickness decreasing especially in the case of thin films, and can come to 141V/μm at a film thickness of 0.1μm which is much larger than the normal value of about 30V/μm. From the proposed formula of silicon critical electric field, the expressions of dielectric layer electric field and vertical breakdown voltage (V_B,V) are obtained. Based on the model, an ultra thin film can be used to enhance dielectric layer electric field and so increase vertical breakdown voltage for SOI devices because of its high silicon critical electric field, and with a dielectric layer thickness of 2μm the vertical breakdown voltages reach 852 and 300V for the silicon film thicknesses of 0.1 and 5μm, respectively. In addition, a relation between dielectric layer thickness and silicon film thickness is obtained, indicating a minimum vertical breakdown voltage that should be avoided when an SOI device is designed. 2D simulated results and some experimental results are in good agreement with analytical results.     

Different optical properties in different periodic slot cavity geometrical morphologies

In this paper,optical properties of two-dimensional periodic annular slot cavity arrays in hexagonal close-packing on a silica substrate are theoretically characterized by finite difference time domain(FDTD) simulation method.By simulating reflectance spectra,electric field distribution,and charge distribution,we confirm that multiple cylindrical surface plasmon resonances can be excited in annular inclined slot cavities by linearly polarized light,in which the four reflectance dips are attributed to Fabry–Perot cavity resonances in the coaxial cavity.A coaxial waveguide mode TE11 will exist in these annular cavities,and the wavelengths of these reflectance dips are effectively tailored by changing the geometrical pattern of slot cavity and the dielectric materials filled in the cavities.These resonant wavelengths are localized in annular cavities with large electric field enhancement and dissipate gradually due to metal loss.The formation of an absorption peak can be explained from the aspect of phase matching conditions.We observed that the proposed structure can be tuned over the broad spectral range of 600–4000 nm by changing the outer and inner radii of the annular gaps,gap surface topography.Meanwhile,different lengths of the cavity may cause the shift of resonance dips.Also,we study the field enhancement at different vertical locations of the slit.In addition,dielectric materials filling in the annular gaps will result in a shift of the resonance wavelengths,which make the annular cavities good candidates for refractive index sensors.The refractive index sensitivity of annular cavities can also be tuned by the geometry size and the media around the cavity.Annular cavities with novel applications can be implied as surface enhanced Raman spectra substrates,refractive index sensors,nano-lasers,and optical trappers.     

Near-Field Birefringence Response of Liquid Crystal Molecules in Thickness Direction of Liquid Crystal Thin Film Orientated by Shear Force

Information of molecular orientation in nematic liquid crystal （LC） is attractive and important for applications in the field of display devices. We demonstrate a novel method using a birefringence scanning near-field optical microscope （Bi-SNOM） with a probe which is inserted into the LC thin film to detect the molecular orientation from its birefringence responses in the thickness direction of the LC thin film. The probe is laterally vibrated when going forward into the LC thin film, and the retardation and azimuth angle are recorded as the probe going down. Firstly, the thickness of the LC thin film is measured by the shear force detection. Since the shear force acts as a stimulation to reorientate the LC molecules above the substrate surface, we can detect the molecular orientation caused by a polyimide alignment substrate and the effect to molecular orientation caused by vibration of fibre probe. As a result, the orientation profiling of the LC film in depth direction is obtained in both the cases that the direction of probe vibrating is vertical/parallel to the rubbing direction of the alignment film. Furthermore, the thickness of completely orientated layers just above the substrate surface can also be obtained by either vibrating probe or no-vibrating probe. Ultimately, the LC thin film can be modelled in thickness direction from all the results using this method.     

Cherenkov terahertz radiation from Dirac semimetals surface plasmon polaritons excited by an electron beam

We demonstrate a physical mechanism for terahertz(THz) generation from surface plasmon polaritons(SPPs). In a structure with a bulk Dirac semimetals(BDSs) film deposited on a dielectric substrate, the energy of the asymmetric SPP mode can be significantly enhanced to cross the light line of the substrate due to the SPP-coupling between the interfaces of the film. Therefore, the SPPs can be immediately transformed into Cherenkov radiation without removing the wavevector mismatch. Additionally, the symmetric SPP mode can also be dramatically lifted to cross the substrate light line when a buffer layer with low permittivity relative to the substrate is introduced. In this case, dual-frequency THz radiation from the two SPP modes can be generated simultaneously. The radiation intensity is significantly enhanced by over two orders due to the field enhancement of the SPPs. The radiation frequency can be tuned in the THz frequency regime by adjusting the beam energy and the chemical potential of the BDSs. Our results could find potential applications in developing room temperature, tunable, coherent, and intense THz radiation sources to cover the entire THz band.     

Effect of mechanical force on domain switching in BiFeO_3 ultrathin films

Ferroelectric polarization can be switched by an external applied electric field and may also be reversed by a mechanical force via flexoelectricity from the strain gradient.In this study,we report the mechanical writing of an epitaxial BiFeO3(BFO)thin film and the combined action of an applied mechanical force and electric field on domain switching,where the mechanical force and electric field are applied using the tip of atomic force microscopy.When the applied force exceeds the threshold value,the upward polarization of the BFO thin film can be reversed by pure mechanical force via flexoelectricity;when an electric field is simultaneously applied,the mechanical force can reduce the coercive electric field because both the piezoelectricity from the homogeneous strain and the flexoelectricity from strain gradient contribute to the internal electric field in the film.The mechanically switched domains exhibit a slightly lower surface potential when compared with that exhibited by the electrically switched domains due to no charge injection in the mechanical method.Furthermore,both the mechanically and electrically switched domains exhibit a tunneling electroresistance in the BFO ferroelectric tunnel junction.     

Optical transmission enhancement by a sub-wavelength film lens

A new sub-wavelength metallic film lens configuration is proposed, which is embedded in a thin ideal metal film, and its near field optical properties arc investigated by finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method. It is found that the optical transmission is greatly enhanced, and the spot size can be reduced by the sub-wavelength metallic film lens in comparison with the bare aperture. This kind of lens is expected to have practical applications in the very small aperture laser (VSAL), a promising nanosource for near-field optical storage and lithography.     

Electric-field-modified Feshbach resonances in ultracold atom–molecule collision

We present a detailed analysis of near zero-energy Feshbach resonances in ultracold collisions of atom and molecule,taking the He–PH system as an example, subject to superimposed electric and magnetic static fields. We find that the electric field can induce Feshbach resonance which cannot occur when only a magnetic field is applied, through couplings of the adjacent rotational states of different parities. We show that the electric field can shift the position of the magnetic Feshbach resonance, and change the amplitude of resonance significantly. Finally, we demonstrate that, for narrow magnetic Feshbach resonance as in most cases of ultracold atom–molecule collision, the electric field may be used to modulate the resonance, because the width of resonance in electric field scale is relatively larger than that in magnetic field scale.     

Improvement of Field Emission Characteristics of Copper Nitride Films with Increasing Copper Content

A copper nitride （Cu3N） thin film is deposited on a Si substrate by the reactive magnetron sputtering method. The XPS measurements of the composite film indicate that the Cu content in the film is increased to 80.82 at. % and the value of the Cu/N ratio to 4.2：1 by introducing 4% 112 into the reactive gas. X-ray diffraction measurements show that the film is composed of Cu3N crystallites with an anti-ReO3 structure. The effects of the increase of copper content on the field emission characteristics of the Cu3N thin film are investigated. Significant improvement in emission current density and emission repeatability could be attributed to the geometric field enhancement, caused by numerous surface nanotips, and the decrease of resistivity of the film.     

Broadband absorption enhancement with ultrathin MoS_2 film in the visible regime

The broadband absorption enhancement effect in ultrathin molybdenum disulfide(Mo S2)films is investigated.It is achieved by inserting the Mo S2 film between a dielectric film and a one-dimensional silver grating backed with a silver mirror.The broadband absorption enhancement in the visible region is achieved,which exhibits large integrated absorption and short-circuit current density for solar energy under normal incidence.The optical properties of the proposed absorber are found to be superior to those of a reference planar structure,which makes the proposed structure advantageous for practical photovoltaic application.Moreover,the integrated absorption and short-circuit current density can be maintained high for a wide range of incident angles.A qualitative understanding of such broadband absorption enhancement effect is examined by illustrating the electromagnetic field distribution at some selected wavelengths.The results pave the way for developing high-performance optoelectronic devices,such as solar cells,photodetectors,and modulators.     

Modulation of Insulator-Metal Transition Temperature by Visible Light in La7/8Sr1/8MnO3 Thin Film

Effects of magnetic field and light illumination on the electrical transport properties of La7/8Sr1/8MnO3 thin film grown on a Si substrate are investigated. The film shows an insulator-metal transition at Tp - 191.9 K and a low-temperature resistance minimum at Tmin ≈ 48 K in darkness. Both magnetic field and light illumination shift the insulator-metal transition temperature Tp to be higher, while the low-temperature transport properties of the film induced by them show different trends. That is, the magnetic field and light illumination make the Tmin shift to lower and higher temperatures, respectively. The enhancement of both Tp and Train under light illumination could be explained in terms of photoinduced hole-doping and demagnetization effects of La7 /8Sr1/8MnO3.     

Engineering of electronic and optical properties of ZnO thin films via Cu doping

ZnO thin films doped with different Cu concentrations are fabricated by reactive magnetron sputtering technique. XRD analysis indicates that the crystal quality of the ZnO:Cu film can be enhanced by a moderate level of Cu-doping in the sputtering process. The results of XPS spectra of zinc, oxygen, and copper elements show that Cu-doping has an evident and complicated effect on the chemical state of oxygen, but little effect on those of zinc and copper. Interestingly, further investigation of the optical properties of ZnO:Cu samples shows that the transmittance spectra exhibit both red shift and blue shift with the increase of Cu doping, in contrast to the simple monotonic behavior of the Burstein–Moss effect. Analysis reveals that this is due to the competition between oxygen vacancies and intrinsic and surface states of oxygen in the sample. Our result may suggest an effective way of tuning the bandgap of ZnO samples.