Strong coupling between phonon-polaritons and plasmonic nanorods

We perform far-field spectroscopy of infrared metal antennas on silicon oxide layers of different thickness, where we find a splitting of the plasmonic resonance. This splitting can result in a transparency window, corresponding to suppression of antenna scattering, respectively "cloaking" of the antenna. Backed up by theory, we show that this effect is caused by strong coupling between the metal antenna plasmons and the surface phonon polaritons in the oxide layer. The effect is a kind of induced transparency in which the strength of the phonon-polariton field plays the crucial role. It represents a further tuning possibility for the optical performance of infrared devices.