Tailoring light-matter interaction with a nanoscale plasmon resonator

Phys Rev Lett. 2012 Jun 1;108(22):226803. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.108.226803. Epub 2012 May 31.

Abstract

We propose and demonstrate a new approach for achieving enhanced light-matter interactions with quantum emitters. Our approach makes use of a plasmon resonator composed of defect-free, highly crystalline silver nanowires surrounded by patterned dielectric distributed Bragg reflectors. These resonators have an effective mode volume (V(eff)) 2 orders of magnitude below the diffraction limit and a quality factor (Q) approaching 100, enabling enhancement of spontaneous emission rates by a factor exceeding 75 at the cavity resonance. We also show that these resonators can be used to convert a broadband quantum emitter to a narrow-band single-photon source with color-selective emission enhancement.