Sesame Street Physics

Light and Electrons Cooperate

I can just picture Big Bird:

Can you say, “cooperate?”

Can you say, “surface plasmon polariton?”

When light hits a metal, it can create a surface plasmon polariton–often called simply a “surface plasmon”–which is a traveling wave combining electromagnetic fields with electron oscillations. Researchers are using tiny plasmon antennas to funnel more light into solar cells (photovoltaics), increasing their efficiency. Others studying “plasmonics” hope to develop devices that replace some electric currents with plasmon waves, because plasmons can theoretically carry as much information as light pulses but squeeze it into the nanometer-sized wires used in standard computer chips.