Interdisciplinary research addressing fundamental issues and questions, a systems level approach, along with close ties to industry, all brought together to yield relevant and timely research is the formula for success in the ECE Department at Carnegie Mellon. Under the direction of Elias Towe, research includes plasmonics. In physics, a plasmon is a quantum of a plasma oscillation. The plasmon is the quasiparticle resulting from the quantization of plasma oscillations just as photons and phonons are quantizations of light and sound waves, respectively. Thus, plasmons are collective oscillations of the free electron gas density, often at optical frequencies. Plasmons have been considered as a means of transmitting information on computer chips, since plasmons can support much higher frequencies (into the 100 THz range, while conventional wires become very lossy in the tens of GHz). Plasmons have also been proposed as a means of high-resolution lithography and microscopy due to their extremely small wavelengths. Both of these applications have seen successful demonstrations in the lab environment. Finally, surface plasmons have the unique capacity to confine light to very small dimensions which could enable many new applications.
