Confining photons to atomic length scales
Final Report Abstract
This project dealt with the localization of photons to atomic lengthscales for optical microscopy and quantum optics, in particular to achieve light-matter strong coupling at ambient conditions. The idea was that strong coupling (SC) might be achieved by reducing the mode volume despite the low quality factors of plasmonic resonators. A further idea was to make use of strong coupling in microscopy by exploiting the concomitant spectral splitting to generate a contrast mechanism in fluorescence microscopy. Indeed, during the course of the project among the first demonstrations of SC to a single quantum emitter at ambient conditions could be demonstrated, only preceded by a work published by the group of J. Baumberg, Cambridge, which showed shaky evidence for the same claim, yet some time before. In follow-up experiments, we have investigated a characteristic benefit of room-temperature strong coupling, which is the possibility to strongly couple multiple nearly degenerate levels in the same quantum dot to a single plasmonic resonance. This increases the coupling strength in a Dicke-like fashion but retains the quantum nonlinearity of the process. Recently, we were able to perform another single-emitter strong coupling experiment showing anti-crossing of light and matter resonances, thereby adding a missing piece of evidence. In terms of microscopy, we performed an experiment in which we used single quantum dots attached to microtubule in a gliding assay to probe the local fields of plasmonic nanoslits. Further experiments exploited the increasing proficiency in fabrication of nanostructures based on single-crystal gold flakes to create optical nonlinearities in asymmetric resonant antennas as well as nanodevices such as a photon circuit that sorts photons according to helicity. Overall, it can be conceded that the research conducted in the context of this project has indeed brought structural precision of plasmonic nanostructures close to the atomic realm thereby opening new possibilities in the field of nano-optics.
Publications
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Controlled Growth of High-Aspect-Ratio Single-Crystalline Gold Platelets. Crystal Growth & Design, 18(3), 1297-1302.
Krauss, Enno; Kullock, René; Wu, Xiaofei; Geisler, Peter; Lundt, Nils; Kamp, Martin & Hecht, Bert
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Near-field strong coupling of single quantum dots. Science Advances, 4(3).
Groß, Heiko; Hamm, Joachim M.; Tufarelli, Tommaso; Hess, Ortwin & Hecht, Bert
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Parallel mapping of optical near-field interactions by molecular motor-driven quantum dots. Nature Nanotechnology, 13(8), 691-695.
Groß, Heiko; Heil, Hannah S.; Ehrig, Jens; Schwarz, Friedrich W.; Hecht, Bert & Diez, Stefan
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Controlling Light-Matter Interaction between Localized Surface Plasmons and Quantum Emitters, PhD thesis (2019)
Groß, Heiko
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Nonclassical Optical Properties of Mesoscopic Gold. Physical Review Letters, 122(24).
Großmann, Swen; Friedrich, Daniel; Karolak, Michael; Kullock, René; Krauss, Enno; Emmerling, Monika; Sangiovanni, Giorgio & Hecht, Bert
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Driving plasmonic nanoantennas at perfect impedance matching using generalized coherent perfect absorption. Nanophotonics, 10(7), 1879-1887.
Grimm, Philipp; Razinskas, Gary; Huang, Jer-Shing & Hecht, Bert
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Single quantum emitter Dicke enhancement. Physical Review Research, 3(3).
Tufarelli, Tommaso; Friedrich, Daniel; Groß, Heiko; Hamm, Joachim; Hess, Ortwin & Hecht, Bert
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Anticrossing of a plasmonic nanoresonator mode and a single quantum dot at room temperature, arxiv.org/abs/2305.06909
Friedrich, D.; Qin, J.; Schurr, B.; Tufarelli, T.; Groß, H. & Hecht, Bert
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Controlling Field Asymmetry in Nanoscale Gaps for Second Harmonic Generation. Advanced Optical Materials, 11(21).
Meier, Jessica; Zurak, Luka; Locatelli, Andrea; Feichtner, Thorsten; Kullock, René & Hecht, Bert
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Direct electrical modulation of surface response in a single plasmonic nanoresonator, arxiv.org/abs/2307.01423
Zurak, L.; Wolff, C.; Meier, J.; Kullock, R.; Mortensen, N.A.; Hecht, B. & Feichtner, T.
