Atomic-scale structural fluctuations of a plasmonic cavity

Abstract

We study fluctuations in plasmonic electroluminescence at the single-atom limit profiting from the precision of a low-temperature scanning tunneling microscope. First, we investigate the influence of a controlled single-atom transfer on the plasmonic properties of the junction. Next, we form a well-defined atomic contact of several quanta of conductance. In contact, we observe changes of the electroluminescence intensity that can be assigned to spontaneous modifications of electronic conductance, plasmonic excitation and optical antenna properties all originating from minute atomic rearrangements at or near the contact. The observations are relevant for the understanding of processes leading to spontaneous intensity variations in plasmon-enhanced atomic-scale spectroscopies.

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Cited by in corpus (4)

• Advances in ultrafast plasmonics
• Inelastic Light Scattering in the Vicinity of a Single-Atom Quantum Point Contact in a Plasmonic Picocavity
• Asymmetric power dissipation in electronic transport through a quantum point contact
• Light Emission and Conductance Fluctuations in Electrically Driven and Plasmonically Enhanced Molecular Junctions