4590 Vol. 44, No. 18 / 15 September 2019 / Optics Letters Letter Giant electron–phonon coupling detected under surface plasmon resonance in Au film 1,2 3 3 1,2, FENG HE, NATHANIAL SHEEHAN, SETH R. BANK, AND YAGUO WANG * 1Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78712, USA 2Texas Materials Institute, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78712, USA 3Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78758, USA *Corresponding author:
[email protected] Received 4 July 2019; revised 22 August 2019; accepted 23 August 2019; posted 23 August 2019 (Doc. ID 371563); published 13 September 2019 Surface plasmon resonance (SPR) is a powerful tool to am- small change in reflectance/transmittance and can hardly be plify coherent phonon signals in metal films. In a 40 nm Au captured by regular coherent phonon spectroscopy. film excited with a 400 nm pump, we observed an abnor- Surface plasmon resonance (SPR) has been proven a power- mally large electron–phonon coupling constant of about ful tool to enhance the detection of CPs in metal films 17 3 8 × 10 W∕ m K, almost 40× larger than those reported [2,17–19] and dielectrics [14]. SPR is the coherent excitation in noble metals, and even comparable to transition metals. of a delocalized charge wave that propagates along an interface. We attribute this phenomenon to quantum confinement SPPs, which are the evanescent waves from the coupling be- and interband excitation. With SPR, we also observed tween light and SP in metals, can create a strongly enhanced two coherent phonon modes in a GaAs/AlAs quantum well electric field at the metal/air interface [20].