Strong extinction of a laser beam by a single molecule

Abstract

We present an experiment where a single molecule strongly affects the amplitude and phase of a laser field emerging from a subwavelength aperture. We achieve a visibility of -6% in direct and +10% in cross-polarized detection schemes. Our analysis shows that a close to full extinction should be possible using near-field excitation.

5 pages, 4 figures, submitted to PRL

References in corpus (1)

• On-command enhancement of single molecule fluorescence using a gold nanoparticle as an optical nano-antenna

Cited by in corpus (10)

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• Interfacing light and single atoms with a lens
• Interferometry of a Single Nanoparticle Using the Gouy Phase of a Focused Laser Beam
• Scanning Near-Field Optical Coherent Spectroscopy of Single Molecules at 1.4 Kelvin
• Exploring the limits of single emitter detection in fluorescence and extinction
• Extinction imaging of a single quantum emitter in its bright and dark states