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.