3D Imaging of Optical Modes in Dielectric Photonic Nanocavities with Sub-wavelength Field Confinement.

ABSTRACT: Dielectric optical cavities are emerging as viable platforms for efficiently concentrating light within extremely small volumes of sub-wavelength dimensions. This breaks with the notion that only plasmonic nanostructures can achieve this scale of confinement and enables strong light-matter interactions without the losses typically associated with metals. Here, we directly visualize the optical modes of a topology-optimized silicon bowtie nanocavity using multi-orientation electron energy-loss spectroscopy. Tomographic reconstruction of the resulting data sets reveals the three-dimensional profiles of several polarized optical modes in close agreement with simulations. A resonance near the telecom wavelength (∼1550 nm) is shown to be tightly localized at the bowtie bridge, confirming its de

SUBMITTER: Seifner MS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12636085 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature