Near- and far-field studies of polariton-enhanced interactions between light and molecules
PhD Thesis defense by Andrei Bylinkin
Supervisors: Rainer Hillenbrand and Alexey Nikitin
This thesis aims to study the interaction between polaritons and molecular excitations. We demonstrate by near-field nanoimaging techniques that strong coupling (SC) can be achieved between propagating phonon polaritons in thin van der Waals crystals and molecular vibrations in adjacent thin molecular layers. Numerical calculations support our findings and also predict SC for nanometer-thin molecular layers and polaritons in few-layer vdW materials, which could make propagating polaritons a promising platform for ultra-sensitive on-chip spectroscopy and future SC experiments. Furthermore, we introduce novel dual-band polaritonic nanoresonators hosting different types of polaritons at visible and mid-infrared frequencies, which simultaneously couple to excitons and molecular vibrations in an adjacent molecular layer. These dual-band coupling capabilities may offer new pathways for manipulating exciton and molecular vibration coupling in future optoelectronics applications.