Molecular decay rate near nonlocal plasmonic particles.

When the size of metal nanoparticles is smaller than typically 10 nm, their optical response becomes sensitive to both spatial dispersion and quantum size effects associated with the confinement of the conduction electrons inside the particle. In this Letter, we propose a nonlocal scheme to compute molecular decay rates near spherical nanoparticles which includes the electron-electron interactions through a simple model of electronic polarizabilities. The plasmonic particle is schematized by a dynamic dipolar polarizability α(NL)(ω), and the quantum system is characterized by a two-level system. In this scheme, the light matter interaction is described in terms of classical field susceptibilities. This theoretical framework could be extended to address the influence of nonlocality on the dynamics of quantum systems placed in the vicinity of nano-objects of arbitrary morphologies.