The sNOm Laboratory focusses on the investigation of the fundamental processes and the applications in the fields of:

Plasmonics and Nano-photonics

Specifically, we are dedicated to the development of plasmonic and nano-photonics platforms for:

• Light steering and modulation at the nanoscale
• Frequency mixing at the nanoscale
• Molecular sensing

sNOm Activities

Light steering and modulation at the nanoscale

(click on the title to download a relevant pubblication on the subject)

• Nonlinear light manipulation at the nanoscale (Fig.3)
• Steering the nonlinear emission from metasurfaces (Fig.4)

Frequency mixing at the nanoscale

• Harmonic generation via plasmonic nanoantennas (Fig.5)
• Frequency mixing via dielectric nanoantennas (submitted) (Fig.6)

Molecular Sensing

• Chiral sensing with Superchiral Bloch Surface Waves in 1D photonic crystals (Fig.7)
• Sensing platforms based on nonlinear plasmonic metasurfaces (Fig.8)

sNOm Facilities

Optical setups:

• a state of the art home-made confocal microscopes with diffraction-limited resolution capability to investigated nanostructures and nanostructured materials;
• an optical goniometer to investigate the angular dependence of the optical response of planar samples upon collimated light illumination.

Light Sources:
The optical setups can be coupled with ultrafast lasers delivering laser pulses with time duration of 150 fs with emission from the visible (VIS) to the near-infrared (NIR) and short wave infrared (SWIR) to investigate the nonlinear optical properties of nanostructured materials. In particular, we operate:

• an ultrafast solid state oscillator (Chamaleon, Coherent Inc.) delivering 150 fs pulses which are tunable in the VIS-NIR (680-1080nm) wavelength range;
• an ultrafast solid state oscillator (Origami, OneFive/NKT) delivering 160 fs pulses at 1550 nm wavelength (SWIR range).

The set of light sources it complemented by a variety of laser diodes operating in continuous wave from 400 nm to 1550 nm.

Detection systems:
The sNOm lab is equipped with several detection systems

• Fast-response and amplified photodiodes working in the VIS-NIR range;
• Single photon avalanche detectors (SPAD) working both in the VIS-NIR (silicon-based) and in the SWIR (InGaAs-based) region of the electromagnetic spectrum for extreme low light measurements;
• A VIS-NIR (400nm-1100nm) spectrometer coupled to a cooled charged coupled device (CCD) camera and a SWIR (900 nm-2200 nm) spectrometer coupled to a cooled charged couple device (CCD) camera for the acquisition of spectra in the extreme low-light regime.