Abstract

Antennas are widely used by electrical engineers to enhance the coupling between propagating waves and electric sources or detectors. It is thus tempting to develop an optical analog to tailor visible light emission or absorption by an atom or a molecule. This idea has been put forward recently [1-4] and it has been demonstrated that both the radiative rate and the emission pattern of optical emitters can be modified by metallic nanostructures. The application of the concepts of antennas to nanooptics has been extensively discussed by Engheta’s group who has introduced many novel ideas in the field in recent contributions [5].

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