Nanophotonics and Metrology laboratory NAM

Welcome to the website of the NAM !
I am delighted to welcome you to the Nanophotonics and Metrology Laboratory (NAM) at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne(EPFL). The main focus of our research is nanophotonics: the study of the interaction of light with structures smaller than the wavelength, with special emphasis on plasmonics: the optics of metallic nanostructures. We pursue a very comprehensive research that includes modelling, nanofabrication and optical characterization. Applications of our work include the development of novel biosensing techniques, nonlinear plasmonics, optical metamaterials, as well as the fundamental properties of plasmonic nanostructures.
Please check our news and publications pages for recent research results. The NAM contributes also to several teaching programs at EPFL including photonics, electrical engineering, micro-engineering; and we offer a broad variety of lectures and student projects.
I do hope that you will find interesting and useful material on this site, please do not hesitate to give me your feedback.
Olivier J.F. Martin
Latest news
Double resonant antenna to enhance SHG
Second harmonic generation (SHG) is an optical process where a system illuminated at a fundamental frequency produces a response at twice that fundamental frequency (the second harmonic). Recently we proposed an original nano-antenna structure to enhance this process using double resonances both at the fundamental and the second harmonic frequency.
Anisotropic Purcell factor
There are many on-going experiments that deal with the interaction of molecules or atoms with plasmonic systems. Unfortunately, the theoretical description of these experiments is often limited to simplistic two-level atoms. Here we introduce the more advanced anisotropic Purcell factor to describe the spontaneous emission linewidths of a four-level atom. This original approach provides a very good description of the interaction between molecules and plasmonic nanostructures in the weak coupling regime.
Making the invisible visible!
The way we apprehend our world is obviously determined by the fact that what we observe is visible or not! This is also true for observing light emitted from molecules or atoms. Whilst numerous optical transitions are possible between the different energy levels of such a molecule or atom, many of these transitions never show up since they are forbidden by symmetry rules. However, when the surrounding of the emitter (atom, molecule) is modified, these symmetry rules are modified and transitions that were previously forbidden and invisible, become perfectly visible!
Fano resonances: retrieving the underlying modal structure
In plasmonic systems, Fano resonance originate from the interaction between a bright and a dark mode. Using our recently developed ab-initio formalism, we demonstrate that the underlying modal structure can be easily retrieved for a broad variety of experimental plasmonic systems.- All the news...
Research Fields of the NAM
- Plasmonics
- Advanced biosensors
- Modelling optical nanostructures
- Nanofabrication
- Optical characterization
- Nanophotonics
- Optical metamaterials
Contacts
Nanophotonics and Metrology Laboratory (NAM)
EPFL-STI-IMT-NAM
Station 11
CH-1015 Lausanne
Show on campus map