3D light harnessing based on coupling engineering between 1D-2D Photonic Crystal membranes and metallic nano-antenna

A new approach is proposed for the optimum addressing of a metallic nano-antenna (NA) with a free space optical beam. This approach relies on the use of an intermediate resonator structure that provides the appropriate modal conversion of the incoming beam. More precisely, the intermediate resonator consists in a Photonic Crystal (PC) membrane resonant structure that takes benefit of surface addressable slow Bloch modes. First, a phenomenological approach including a deep physical understanding of the NA-PC coupling and its optimization is presented. In a second step, the main features of this analysis are confirmed by numerical simulations (FDTD).