Structured light and nanomaterials open new ways to tailor light at the nanoscale

What happens when you excite novel assemblies of nanomaterials using structured light? Joint research between Tampere University of Technology (TUT) (Finland) and University of Tübingen (Germany) has shown that carefully structured light and matching arrangements of metal nanostructures (so-called "plasmonic oligomers") can be combined to alter the properties of the generated light at the nanometer scale. In particular, the teams have shown that the efficiency of nonlinear optical fields (e.g., second-harmonics) generated from the oligomers is strongly influenced by how the constituents of the oligomer are arranged in space and how these constituents are illuminated by structured light.