Microcavity plasmonics: strong coupling of photonic cavities and plasmons

The understanding of light-matter interactions at the nanoscale lays the groundwork for many future technologies, applications and materials. The scope of this article is the investigation of coupled photonic-plasmonic systems consisting of a combination of photonic microcavities and metallic nanostructures. In such systems, it is possible to observe an exceptionally strong coupling between electromagnetic light modes of a resonator and collective electron oscillations (plasmons) in the metal. Furthermore, the results have shown that coupled photonic-plasmonic structures possess a considerably higher sensitivity to changes in their environment than conventional localized plasmon sensors due to a plasmon excitation phase shift that depends on the environment.