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Chemical synthesized silver nanowires have been proved to be the efficient architecture for Plasmonic waveguides, but the high propagation loss prevents their widely applications. Here, we demonstrate that the propagation distance of the plasmons along the Ag NW can be extended if the Ag NW was placed on a dielectric multilayer substrate containing a photonic band gap, but not placed on a commonly used glass substrate. The propagation distance at 630 nm wavelength can reach 16 um even that the Ag NW is as thin as 90 nm in diameter. Experimental and simulation results further show that the polarization of this propagating plasmon mode was nearly parallel to the surface of the dielectric multilayer, so it was excited by a transverse-electric polarized Bloch surface wave propagating along a polymer nanowire with diameter at only about 170 nm on the same dielectric multilayer. Numerical simulations were also carried out and consistent with the experiment results. Our work provides a platform to extend the propagation distance of plasmonic waveguide and also for the integration between photonic and plasmonic waveguides on the nanometre scale., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures

Here we report a method for visualization of volumetric structural information of live biological samples with no exogenous contrast agents. The process is made possible through a technique that involves generation, synthesis and analysis of three-dimensional (3D) Fourier components of light diffracted by the sample. This leads to the direct recovery of quantitative cellular morphology with no iterative procedures for reduced computational complexity. Combing with the fact that the technique is easily adaptive to any imaging platform and requires minimum sample preparation, our proposed method is particularly promising for observing fast, volumetric and dynamic events previously only accessible through staining methods., Comment: 20 pages, 10 figures

In this letter, we demonstrate a novel diffraction-free Bloch surface wave (DF-BSW) sustained on all-dielectric multilayers that does not diffract after being passed through three obstacles or across a single mode fiber. It can propagate in a straight line for distances longer than 110 {\mu}m at a wavelength of 633 nm and could be applied as an in-plane optical virtual probe, both in air and in an aqueous environment. The ability to be used in water, its long diffraction-free distance, and its tolerance to multiple obstacles make this DF-BSW ideal for certain applications in areas such as the biological sciences, where many measurements are made on glass surfaces or for which an aqueous environment is required, and for high-speed interconnections between chips, where low loss is necessary. Specifically, the DF-BSW on the dielectric multilayer can be used to develop novel flow cytometry that is based on the surface wave, but not the free space beam, to detect the surface-bound targets.

Plasmonic nanolasers have ultrahigh lasing thresholds, especially those devices for which all three dimensions are truly subwavelength. Because of a momentum mismatch between the propagating light and localized optical field of the subwavelength nanocavity, poor optical pumping efficiency is another important reason for the ultrahigh threshold but is normally always ignored. Based on a cavity-embedded nanoantenna array design, we demonstrate a room-temperature low-threshold plasmonic nanolaser that is robust, reproducible, and easy-to-fabricate using chemical-template lithography. The mode volume of the device is~0.22({\lambda}/2n)3 (here,{\lambda} is resonant wavelength and n is the refractive index), and the experimental lasing threshold produced is ~2.70MW/mm2. The lasing polarization and the function of nanoantenna array are investigated in detail. Our work provides a new strategy to achieve room-temperature low-threshold plasmonic nanolasers of interest in applications to biological sensoring and information technology.

In this letter, a plasmonic dark field microscopy taking advantages of the polymer loaded surface plasmon polariton waveguide (PLSPPW) is experimentally demonstrated. The dye molecules (Rhodamine 6G, Rh6G) are doped in the PLSPPW to launch the plasmonic waves or guided waves. Due to the localized property of these waves, the near-field optical energy on the surface of PLSPPW can be scattered into the far-field only in the presence of the objects. The scattering signals then form the dark-field image of the objects. The proposed technique just utilizes a chip-scale integrated plasmonic multilayered structure which is highly compatible with the conventional optical microscopy. The polymer film involved in the PLSPPW also brings about the merits of small roughness, good stability and bio-compatibility

In this letter, the leakage radiation microscopy (LRM) is extended into characterization of planar waveguide modes (WMs) rather than surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) taking advantages of the coupling between WMs and fluorescence emission. Propagation constants of different WMs allowed in the same planar waveguide can be simultaneously and rapidly derived from the Fourier plane image of fluorescence based LRM. Numerical simulations are also carried out to calculate propagation constants of these modes, which are consistent with experimental results. Our experiments provide a simple but high efficient method to characterize planar waveguides.