Hierarchy in optical near-fields and its application to memory retrieval

Opt Express. 2005 Nov 14;13(23):9265-71. doi: 10.1364/opex.13.009265.

Abstract

Optical near-field interactions exhibit different behavior at different scales, which we term scale-dependent physical hierarchy. Using the intrinsic logical hierarchy of information and a simple digital coding scheme, scale-dependent optical memory accesses are associated with different levels of the information hierarchy. The basic principle is demonstrated by finite-different time-domain simulations and experiments using metal nanoparticles.