Wedge and gap plasmonic resonances in double nanoholes

We study the plasmonic resonances of double nanoholes (DNHs) in metal films. These apertures exhibit the usual gap-mode Fabry-Perot resonances, where the zeroth order resonance is determined by the waveguide cut-off and the first order resonance shows sensitivity to the film thickness. An additional wedge resonance is observed, which is sensitive to the curvature of the cusps in the DNHs, analogous to the wedge modes of single wedges. While the gap mode intensity increases dramatically with decreasing gap-width, the wedge mode intensity saturates since its field enhancement arises from the curvature of the metal film, like cylindrical Sommerfeld waves. Experimental transmission spectra agree well with finite-difference time-domain simulations showing these separate resonances. The controlled design of these resonances is critical for applications including optical tweezers, nonlinear conversion, sensing and spectroscopy. (C) 2015 Optical Society of AmericaNatural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC); National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) [11374041, 61377050, 11574011, 11574035]; BUPT Excellent Ph.D. Students Foundation [CX201324]; State Key Laboratory of Information Photonics and Optical Communications of Beijing University of Posts and TelecommunicationsSCI(E)EIARTICLErgordon@uvic.ca2330227-302362