Research
I pay special attention to the study of novel physical phenomena associated to the excitation of localized resonances and its application to a variety of technological areas ranging from enhanced spectroscopies to sensing or light guiding. In this context the maintopics of research I focus on include: 1) Research on plasmonic nanoantennas: where I focus onthe interaction of electromagnetic radiation with matter in the subwavelength regime, aiming at thestudy of how through engineering the shape, material or geometric configuration, we can optimizethe way these structures interact with the incident EM radiation and achieve desired performance and properties. 2) Research on Field Enhanced Spectroscopy and microscopy: In this area, I collaborate with experimentalists from several different research centres to both, theoretically and experimentally study the optical response of metallic nanoparticles, optimizing them for field enhanced spectroscopies.In particular, I study the tunability of the resonance energy of the metallic nanoparticles with size, shape and material composition opens the access to molecular vibrations over a wide spectral range includingat near ultraviolet, visible and infrared frequencies. And the last and more important research area, I proposed and successfully started as a new research line in the group: 3) Research on “Dielectric nanoantennas: theoretical and experimental exploration of a new low-loss nanophotonics platform” asan alternative to conventional plasmonics: I have started a new research line in the group on low loss magnetodielectric materials as a new effort on finding new alternatives to plasmonic materials able not only to enhance the light in near and far field but also to direct and control the electric and magnetic response of emitters but with the peculiarity of not perturbing its response due to local heating. This sort of effect, sometimes good for applications like cancer phototerapy with metallic nanoparticles, results highly invasive for other biological applications with optical micromanipulation of active cells.