Abstract：Plasmonics, the confinement of light by metal nanostructures, is a powerful tool to tailor light-matter interaction on the smallest length scales. In my talk, I will give an overview of our recent work with collective as well as single-cavity plasmonic nanostructures to achieve new functionalities in light-matter coupling, vibrational spectroscopy, and nanoscale light emission. I will introduce 3D plasmonic supercrystals, which are artificial materials with deep strong light-matter coupling [1]. These materials support polaritonic resonances across a very broad spectral range, which enables a combination of IR with VIS plasmon-enhanced vibrational spectroscopy [2,3]. I will furthermore show our recent work with plasmonic nanoparticle-on-mirror cavities. These allow us to detect collective IR vibrations in molecular monolayers with VIS spectroscopy [4], and tailor light-emission channels of excitons in 2D materials [5]

[1] N.S. Mueller et al. Nature 583, 780-784 (2020)

[2] N.S. Mueller et al. ACS Nano 15, 5523-5533 (2021)

[3] R. Arul et al. Light: Science & Applications 11, 281 (2022)

[4] N.S. Mueller et al. Nano Letters 22, 7254–7260 (2022)

[5] N.S. Mueller et al. Nature Communications 14, 5726 (2023)

Bio: Dr. Mueller is currently a research fellow at the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society in Berlin, Germany (since 2023). He received his doctorate at Freie Universitaet Berlin (2020), working on plasmon-enhanced light-matter interaction with Prof. Stephanie Reich. For his doctoral studies he was awarded the Ernst-Reuter-Prize and a scholarship from German Telecom Foundation. Afterwards, a Leopoldina scholarship enabled him to move to the NanoPhotonics Centre at the University of Cambridge, UK for postdoctoral research with Prof. Jeremy Baumberg (2021-2023). His research aims at controlling nanoscale light-matter interaction with a wide range of nanooptical excitations, including plasmons, excitons, and phonon polaritons from the VIS to the THz.