Photothermal effects in a plasmonic metamaterial structure

Heat generation due to photothermal effects in plasmonic nanostructures have generated many important applications, due to the strong enhancement of light absorption through plasmonic resonance at visible and near-infrared region. In this talk, we review our recent experimental efforts on photothermal effects in a metamaterial nanostructure, which has an ultrasensitive heating response owing to plasmonic resonance. We observed close-to-instantaneous fusion and re-shaping of the nanoparticles with a nanosecond pulse train. The generated heat profile has a subwavelength resolution, and the resonance wavelength can be in principle tailored to arbitrary wavelength region by choosing an appropriate geometry for the resonator structure.