"Optical Spectroscopy of Nanoscale Systems"

Abstract:  For 300 years optical microscopy and spectroscopy have been
a mainstay in our scientific toolset. Light is widely tunable, coherent,
and weakly interacting except on resonance with materials of interest
- all excellent measurement properties. Perhaps its only drawback is
that the resolution scales inversely as the energy, a problem for all
but the hardest materials. This is particularly relevant with the
emergence in the last decade of nanoscale science and engineering,
requiring technical advances, new materials and approaches that allow
interrogation and control at a fraction of the wavelength. This talk
will review near- and far-field techniques that break the diffraction
barrier, focusing on our groups' work in solid immersion microscopy of
semiconductor devices and in record extinction of a laser beam by a
single quantum dot - a new approach to quantum information processing.
Nanoscale spectroscopy of single, isolated nanotubes is shown to reveal
details of electron-phonon coupling, and recent results of single and
bilayer graphene will be discussed. Time permitting, examples of
optical spectroscopy and resonance as applied to subcellular imaging,
DNA conformation on surfaces, and high throughput, label-free protein
arrays will be presented.


Bennett B. Goldberg received a B.A. from Harvard College in 1982, an
M.S. and Ph.D. in Physics from Brown University in 1984 and 1987.
Following a Bantrell Post-doctoral appointment at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology and the Francis Bitter National Magnet Lab,
he joined the physics faculty at Boston University in 1989.

Currently he is Professor and Chairman of Physics, Professor of
Biomedical Engineering and Professor of Electrical & Computer
Engineering. His research interests are in the general area of
ultra-high resolution microscopy and spectroscopy techniques for
hard and soft materials systems. He has worked in near-field
imaging of photonic bandgap, ring microcavity and single-mode
waveguide devices and recently developed subsurface solid immersion
microscopy for silicon IC inspection that has seen application in
extinction coupling to single quantum dots for quantum information
protocols. His group is working on novel approaches to subcellular
imaging with interferometric fluorescenent techniques, and in
biosensor and high-throughput label-free protein arrays. Nano-optics
research also includes a significant effort in resonant Raman
scattering and resonant spectroscopy of individual nanotubes, and
single and bi-layer graphene. Prof. Goldberg is the director of the
Center for Nanoscience and Nanobiotechnology at Boston University.