Meters to nanometers; RF antennas for optics

Abstract

Optical antennas have garnered much interest from the optics community for their ability to manipulate light below the diffraction limit of conventional optics. This relatively new capability to transform light at a sub-wavelength scale has been applied to quantum source enhancement, infrared detection and solar cell design. This work aims to expand upon the range of optical antennas presented in literature by exploiting the rich array of well-known radio-frequency (RF) antenna designs and applying them to the optical spectral region, for the enhancement of quantum emitters. © 2012 IEEE.