Self-sifting of chain plasmons: the complex optics of Au nanoparticle clusters

The strong enhancement of electrical fields in subnanometer gaps of self-assembled gold nanoparticle clusters holds great promise for large scale fabrication of sensitive optical sensing substrates. Due to the large number of involved nanoparticles, however, their optical response is complex and not easily accessible through numerical simulations. Here, we use hyperspectral supercontinuum spectroscopy to demonstrate how confined optical modes of well defined energies are supported by different areas of the cluster. Due to the strong resonant coupling in those regions, the cluster essentially acts as a nanoscale optical sieve which sorts incident light according to its wavelength.