Absorption enhancement by matching the cross-section of plasmonic nanowires to the field structure of tightly focused beams

Nanostructured materials, designed for enhanced light absorption, are receiving increased scientific and technological interest. In this paper we propose a physical criterion for designing the cross-sectional shape of plasmonic nanowires for improved absorption of a given tightly focused illumination. The idea is to design a shape which increases the matching between the nanowire plasmon resonance field and the incident field. As examples, we design nanowire shapes for two illumination cases: a tightly focused plane wave and a tightly focused beam containing a line singularity. We show that properly shaped and positioned silver nanowires that occupy a relatively small portion of the beam-waist area can absorb up to 65% of the total power of the incident beam. (C)2011 Optical Society of America