Quantum emitters, such as q-dots and dye molecules, in the immediate vicinity of plasmonic nanostructures, resonantly excite surface plasmon-polaritons (SPPs) under incoherent pump. The efficiency in the excitation of SPPs per emitter increases with the number of the emitters, because the SPP field synchronizes emission of the coupled emitters, in analogy with the superadiance (SR) in free space. Using fully quantum mechanical model for two emitters coupled with a metal nanorod, we predict up to 15% increase in the emission yield of single emitter compared to only one emitter near the nanorod. Such emission enhancement is stationary and should be observable even with strong dissipation and dephasing under incoherent pump of emitters. Solid-state quantum emitters with blinking behaviors may be utilized to demonstrate such plasmonic SR emission enhancement. Plasmonic SR may find implications in the excitation of nonradiative modes in plasmonic waveguides, in lowing threshold of plasmonic nanolasers.

Date Published: 20 February 2017
PDF: 13 pages
Proc. SPIE 10118, Advances in Photonics of Quantum Computing, Memory, and Communication X, 1011811 (20 February 2017); doi: 10.1117/12.2248787

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 10118:
Advances in Photonics of Quantum Computing, Memory, and Communication X
Zameer Ul Hasan; Philip R. Hemmer; Hwang Lee; Alan L. Migdall, Editor(s)