What happens to a piece of metal when you shine light on it? This question, which has been one of the driving forces of modern physics, gained renewed interest in recent years, with the advances in fabrication of small metallic nano-particles. When a piece of metal is very small, it turns out that it can couple extremely well to visible light. The study of fundamental and applicable aspects of this interaction is typically referred to as plasmonics.
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Source: Phys.org