Optical coupling of deep-subwavelength semiconductor nanowires.

Abstract

Systems of coupled resonators manifest a myriad of exciting fundamental physical phenomena. Analogous to the synthesis of molecules from single atoms, the construction of photonic molecules from stand-alone optical resonators represents a powerful strategy to realize novel functionalities. The coupling of high quality factor (Q) dielectric and semiconductor microresonators is by now well-understood and chipscale applications are abound. The coupling behavior of low-Q nanometallic structures has also been exploited to realize high-performance plasmonic devices and metamaterials. Although dense arrays of semiconductor nanoparticles and nanowires (NWs) find increasing use in optoelectronic devices, their photonic coupling has remained largely unexplored. These high refractive index nano-objects can serve as low-Q optical antennas that can effectively receive and broadcast light. We demonstrate that the broad band antenna response of a pair of NWs can be tuned significantly by engineering their optical coupling and develop an intuitive coupled-mode theory to explain our observations.