Abstract
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The interaction of emitters with plasmonic cavities (PCs) has been
studied extensively during the past decade. Much of the experimental
work has focused on the weak coupling regime, manifested most importantly
by the celebrated Purcell effect, which involves a modulation of the
spontaneous emission rate of the emitter due to interaction with the
local electromagnetic density of states. Recently, there has been
a growing interest in studying hybrid emitter-PC systems in the strong-coupling
(SC) regime, in which the excited state of an emitter hybridizes with
that of the PC to generate new states termed polaritons. This phenomenon
is termed vacuum Rabi splitting (VRS) and is manifested in the spectrum
through splitting into two bands.
In this Account, we discuss
SC with PCs and focus particularly
on work from our lab on the SC of quantum dots (QDs) and plasmonic
silver bowtie cavities. As bowtie structures demonstrate strong electric
field enhancement in their gaps, they facilitate approaching the SC
regime and even reaching it with just one to a few emitters placed
there. QDs are particularly advantageous for such studies, due to
their significant brightness and long lifetime under illumination.
VRS was observed in our lab by optical dark-field microspectroscopy
even in the limit of individual QDs. We further used electron energy
loss spectroscopy, a near-field spectroscopic technique, to facilitate
measuring SC not only in bright modes but also in subradiant, dark
plasmonic modes. Dark modes are expected to live longer than bright
modes and therefore should be able to store electromagnetic energy
for longer times.
Photoluminescence (PL) is another useful observable
for probing
the SC regime at the single-emitter limit, as shown by several laboratories.
We recently used Hanbury Brown and Twiss interferometry to demonstrate
the quantum nature of PL from QDs within PCs, verifying that the measurements
are indeed from one to three QDs. Further spectroscopic studies of
QD-PC systems in fact manifested several surprising features, indicating
discrepancies between scattering and PL spectra. These observations
pointed to the contribution of multiple excited states. Indeed, using
model simulations based on an extended Jaynes–Cummings Hamiltonian,
it was found that the involvement of a dark state of the QDs can explain
the experimental findings. Given that bright and dark states couple
to the cavity with different degrees of coupling strength, the PC
affects in a different manner each excitonic state. This yields complex
relaxation pathways and interesting dynamics.
Future work should
allow us to increase the QD-PC coupling deeper
into the SC regime. This will pave the way to exciting applications
including the generation of single-photon sources and studies of cavity-induced
coherent interactions between emitters.
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