'Deterministic' quantum plasmonics

Aurelien Cuche , Oriane Mollet , Aurélien Drezet (1) , Serge Huant (1)

1 NEEL - NOF - Nano-Optique et Forces

We demonstrate 'deterministic' launching of propagative quantum surface-plasmon polaritons at freely chosen positions on gold plasmonic receptacles. This is achieved by using as plasmon launcher a near-field scanning optical source made of a diamond nanocrystal with two Nitrogen-Vacancy color-center occupancy. Our demonstration relies on leakage-radiation microscopy of a thin homogeneous gold film and on near-field optical microscopy of a nanostructured thick gold film. Our work paves the way to future fundamental studies and applications in quantum plasmonics that require an accurate positioning of single-plasmon sources and may open a new branch in plasmonics and nanophotonics, namely scanning quantum plasmonics.

Domaines: Autre [cond-mat.other]; Optique [physics.optics]; Physique Quantique [quant-ph]

Aurelien Cuche, Oriane Mollet, Aurélien Drezet, Serge Huant. 'Deterministic' quantum plasmonics. Nano Letters, 2010, 10, pp.4566. ⟨10.1021/nl102568m⟩. ⟨hal-00933054⟩