Focusing surface plasmons on Er³⁺ ions through gold planar plasmonic lenses

Gold plasmonic lenses consisting of a planar concentric rings-groove with different periods were milled with a focused gallium ion beam on a gold thin film deposited onto an Er³⁺-doped tellurite glass. The plasmonic lenses were vertically illuminated with an argon ion laser highly focused by means of a 50× objective lens. The focusing mechanism of the plasmonic lenses is explained using a coherent interference model of surface plasmon-polariton (SPP) generation on the circular grating due to the incident field. As a result, phase modulation can be accomplished by the groove gap, similar to a nanoslit array with different widths. This focusing allows a high confinement of SPPs that can excite the Er³⁺ ions of the glass. The Er³⁺ luminescence spectra were measured in the far-field (500-750 nm wavelength range), where we could verify the excitation yield via the plasmonic lens on the Er³⁺ ions. We analyze the influence of the geometrical parameters on the luminescence spectra. The variation of these parameters results in considerable changes of the luminescence spectra.