Science Daily  June 10, 2024 A resonantly excited atomic optical dipole simultaneously generates propagating (far) and evanescent (near) electromagnetic fields. The near-field component diverges in the limit of decreasing distance, indicating an optical antenna with the potential for enormous near-field intensity enhancement. In principle, any atomic optical dipole in a solid can serve as an optical antenna; however, most of them suffer from environmentally induced decoherence that largely mitigates field enhancement. An international team of researchers (USA – University of Chicago, Argonne National Laboratory, Spain) demonstrated that germanium vacancy centres in diamond are exemplary antennas. They measured up to million-fold […]