Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences , Beijing 100190, China.
Nano Lett. 2014 Jun 11;14(6):3358-63. doi: 10.1021/nl500838q. Epub 2014 May 22.
Surface plasmons, the collective oscillations of electrons at metal surface, provide the ability to enhance the weak interaction between individual quantum emitters and photons for quantum information applications. The generation of single plasmons by coupling silver nanowire with single quantum emitters opens the prospects of using quantum optical techniques to control single surface plasmons and designing novel quantum plasmonic devices. However, the real applications will deal with multiple plasmons generated from multiple quantum emitters. Here we report the first experimental demonstration of resolving single plasmons generated by a pair of quantum dots (QDs) on a silver nanowire waveguide. The accurate positions of the two QDs with separation ranging from micrometers to 200 nm within the diffraction limit are determined by using super-resolution imaging method. The efficiency of plasmon generation due to the exciton-plasmon coupling is obtained for each QD. Our research takes a crucial step toward the experimental study of coupled systems of multiple quantum emitters and plasmonic waveguides and would shed new light on the study of light-matter interactions for potential quantum optics and quantum information applications.
表面等离激元是金属表面电子的集体振荡，为量子信息应用提供了增强单个量子发射器与光子之间弱相互作用的能力。通过将银纳米线与单个量子发射器耦合来产生单个等离激元，为使用量子光学技术来控制单个表面等离激元和设计新型量子等离激子器件开辟了前景。然而，实际应用将涉及由多个量子发射器产生的多个等离激元。在这里，我们首次实验证明了在银纳米线波导上由一对量子点（QD）产生的单个等离激元的分辨率。通过使用超分辨率成像方法，可以确定两个 QD 在微米到 200nm 范围内的精确位置，该范围在衍射极限内。获得了由于激子-等离激元耦合而产生等离激元的效率。我们的研究朝着对多个量子发射器和等离子体波导的耦合系统的实验研究迈出了关键的一步，并为潜在的量子光学和量子信息应用中的光物质相互作用研究提供了新的思路。
