Optical study of lithographically defined, subwavelength plasmonic wires and their coupling to embedded quantum emitters

Abstract

We present an optical investigation of surface plasmon polaritons propagating along nanoscale Au-wires, lithographically defined on GaAs substrates. A two-axis confocal microscope was used to perform spatially and polarization resolved measurements in order to confirm the guiding of surface plasmon polaritons over lengths ranging from $5-20\mu m$ along nanowires with a lateral dimension of only $\approx 100nm$. Finite difference time domain simulations are used to corroborate our experimental observations and highlight the potential to couple proximal quantum dot emitters to propagating plasmon modes in such extreme sub-wavelength devices. Our findings are of strong relevance for the development of semiconductor based integrated plasmonic and active quantum plasmonic nanosystems that merge quantum emitters with nanoscale plasmonic elements.

6 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (5)

• Quantum Plasmonics
• Controlled coupling of a single nitrogen-vacancy center to a silver nanowire
• Observation of extremely slow hole spin relaxation in self-assembled quantum dots
• On-Chip Single Plasmon Detection
• Direct measurement of plasmon propagation lengths on lithographically defined metallic waveguides on GaAs

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Surface plasmon resonance spectroscopy of single bowtie nano-antennas using a differential reflectivity method
• Optical properties and interparticle coupling of plasmonic bowtie nanoantennas on a semiconducting substrate
• Monolithically integrated single quantum dots coupled to bowtie nanoantennas
• Imaging surface plasmon polaritons using proximal self-assembled InGaAs quantum dots