Dieter Pohl (physicist)

For the historian, see Dieter Pohl (historian).

Dieter Pohl (Wolfgang Dieter Pohl, born 1938) is a German–Swiss physicist. He became known especially for his pioneering works in nano-optics, near field optics (NFO), and plasmonics.

Dieter Pohl, physicist

Pohl studied at the University of Stuttgart and the Technische Universität München (TUM) where he did his doctorate with Wolfgang Kaiser. In 1968, he moved to IBM Zurich Research Laboratory in Rüschlikon and 1998 to University of Basel. He was appointed titular professor in 2002.[1]

In 1982 he invented and developed the near-field scanning optical microscopy (NSOM/SNOM).,[2] the first optical instrument that provided optical resolution far beyond Abbe's diffraction limit, e.g. 20 nm at wavelength 515 nm.[3][4][5][6] In the following years the close relation between optical near-fields and plasmons was investigated,[7][8][9] contributing to the emergence of the new field of plasmonics.

1999 Dieter Pohl suggested antennas as ideal sources or probes of localized optical near-fields.[10] The problem was that optical antennas have to be 1000000 times smaller than the TV antennas one can see on any roof. By 2005, Dieter and his coworkers[11][12][13][14] had solved the problem and could demonstrate for the first time the resonance and lifetime-reducing properties of nanometer-sized dipole antennas as well as an extremely high local intensity in the (antenna) gap, the place where the wires of a TV antenna are fixed. The intensity caused higher order nonlinear light emission, an interesting fact in view of the tiny near-field spot.

In 1992, Dieter Pohl and Daniel Courjon organized a workshop on near-field optics (NFO)[15] that was to become the origin of bi-annual international NFO-x conferences (2018: x = 15), a platform for nano-, near-field-, nonlinear optics, plasmonics, metamaterials, quantum information, biosensing and ultrafast dynamics.[16]

Dieter Pohl contributed to various reviews and book publications. He acted as reviewer for the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) and the German DFG. A complete list[17] of his papers and inventions will be found on his home page.[18]

Publications and Patents

≈121 publications

≈20 patents, mostly on scanning probe microscopy, micromechanics, storage; diverse publications in the IBM Technical Disclosure Bulletin

Awards and Honors
  • 1996 Carl-Zeiss Research Award
  • 1997 Rank Prize for Electro-Optics
  • 1999 Humboldt Research Prize
  • 1968-1998 various IBM internal awards
  • 2013 Stern-Gerlach Medal of the German Physical Society[19]
Memberships
  1. ^ "Meldung der Universität Basel über neue Titularprofessoren". University of Basel. November 15, 2002. Archived from the original on October 13, 2014. Retrieved April 5, 2019.
  2. ^ Dieter W. Pohl Optical near field scanning microscope, US-Patent Nr. 4604520, 1982, EP patent 0112401, Abstract
  3. ^ Pohl, D. W.; Denk, W.; Lanz, M. (1984). "Optical stethoscopy: Image recording with resolution λ/20". Applied Physics Letters. 44 (7): 651–653. Bibcode:1984ApPhL..44..651P. doi:10.1063/1.94865.
  4. ^ Dürig, U.; Pohl, D. W.; Rohner, F. (1986). "Near‐field optical‐scanning microscopy". Journal of Applied Physics. 59 (10): 3318–3327. Bibcode:1986JAP....59.3318D. doi:10.1063/1.336848.
  5. ^ Denk, Winfried (1991). "Near-field optics: Microscopy with nanometer-size fields". Journal of Vacuum Science & Technology B. 9 (2): 510. Bibcode:1991JVSTB...9..510D. doi:10.1116/1.585558.
  6. ^ D. W. Pohl Scanning Near-Field Optical Microscopy, in Optical and Electron Microscopy Vol. 12, 243 – 312, Academic Press New York 1991
  7. ^ Fischer, U. Ch.; Pohl, D. W. (1989). "Observation of Single-Particle Plasmons by Near-Field Optical Microscopy". Physical Review Letters. 62 (4): 458–461. Bibcode:1989PhRvL..62..458F. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.62.458. PMID 10040238.
  8. ^ Hecht, B.; Bielefeldt, H.; Novotny, L.; Inouye, Y.; Pohl, D. W. (1996). "Local Excitation, Scattering, and Interference of Surface Plasmons". Physical Review Letters. 77 (9): 1889–1892. Bibcode:1996PhRvL..77.1889H. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.77.1889. PMID 10063197.
  9. ^ Bouhelier, A.; Huser, Th.; Tamaru, H.; Güntherodt, H.-J.; Pohl, D. W.; Baida, Fadi I.; Van Labeke, D. (2001). "Plasmon optics of structured silver films". Physical Review B. 63 (15): 155404. Bibcode:2001PhRvB..63o5404B. doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.63.155404.
  10. ^ D. W. Pohl Near field optics seen as an antenna problem in Near-Field Optics: Principles and Applications / The Second Asia-Pacific Workshop on Near Field Optics, Beijing, China October 20–23, 1999, EDITOR M. Ohtsu and X. Zhu,(World Scientific, ISBN 981-02-4365-0, Singapore, p.9 – 21), 2000
  11. ^ Muhlschlegel, P. (2005). "Resonant Optical Antennas". Science. 308 (5728): 1607–1609. Bibcode:2005Sci...308.1607M. doi:10.1126/science.1111886. PMID 15947182. S2CID 40214874.
  12. ^ Farahani, J. N.; Pohl, D. W.; Eisler, H.-J.; Hecht, B. (2005). "Single Quantum Dot Coupled to a Scanning Optical Antenna: A Tunable Superemitter". Physical Review Letters. 95 (1): 017402. Bibcode:2005PhRvL..95a7402F. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.95.017402. PMID 16090656.
  13. ^ Farahani, Javad N; Eisler, Hans-Jürgen; Pohl, Dieter W; Pavius, Michaël; Flückiger, Philippe; Gasser, Philippe; Hecht, Bert (2007). "Bow-tie optical antenna probes for single-emitter scanning near-field optical microscopy". Nanotechnology. 18 (12): 125506. Bibcode:2007Nanot..18l5506F. doi:10.1088/0957-4484/18/12/125506. S2CID 18395179.
  14. ^ Pohl, Dieter W.; Rodrigo, Sergio G.; Novotny, Lukas (2011). "Stacked optical antennas". Applied Physics Letters. 98 (2): 023111. Bibcode:2011ApPhL..98b3111P. doi:10.1063/1.3541544. hdl:10261/369900.
  15. ^ Dieter W. Pohl and Daniel Courjon, "Near Field Optics", NATO ASI SeriesKluwer Academic 1993, ISBN 0-7923-2394-7
  16. ^ "NFO15 - 15th international conference on Near-field Optics and Nanophotonics". 2018. Retrieved April 5, 2019.
  17. ^ "Dieter W. Pohl: Publications and Patents" (PDF). Department of Physics, University of Basel. 2017. Retrieved April 5, 2019.
  18. ^ "Prof. Emer. Pohl". Archived from the original on April 17, 2018. Retrieved September 15, 2018.
  19. ^ "Prizewinners - Stern Gerlach Medal". German Physical Society. Retrieved April 5, 2019.