Seminar 25 -S3, Tuesday 16th Mai 2023, 14:00 (London Time)
Speaker: Alexandre Bouhelier (CNRS, Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire Carnot de Bourgogne UMR 6303 Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté, France)
Title: The glowing fate of hot electrons
Abstract: I will describe a new series of nanoscale components based on a reversible transduction between electron and a photon using optical gap antennas. Our concept provides a novel approach where the light source and the detector can be integrated into a single metallic nanostructure. At the core of the device is an atomic-scale tunnel gap whereby optical rectification, inelastic tunneling, and hot carriers can reciprocally mix photons and electrons with ultrafast conversion dynamics. We will discuss the peculiarity of the broadband spectrum emitted from the antenna feed by a decaying population of hot electrons. The source can be readily integrated to plasmonic and photonic waveguides. The co-integration of atomic-scale optical functional devices with an electronic transduction offers a disruptive solution to interface photons and electrons at this ultimate length scale.
Biography: Alexandre Bouhelier has been a CNRS researcher since December 2005. He obtained his doctoral thesis in Physics at the University of Basel (Switzerland) in 2001 where he specialized in near field optics. Following his doctorate, A. Bouhelier went to The Institute of Optics at the University of Rochester (NY, USA) as a postdoc on a grant from the Swiss national research fund (2001-2003). His work has been centered on the enhancements of the electromagnetic field applied to the optical near field. From 2003 to 2005, A. Bouhelier was a researcher at the Center for Nanoscale Materials at the Argonne National Laboratory (Il, USA) where he specialized in plasmonics. He joined the Carnot Interdisciplinary Laboratory in Burgundy and participated in the development of new components for controlling the surface plasmon. He obtained his Habilitation to Direct Research in 2001. He was promoted to Director of Research in 2014.