Nanoscale electronics and photonics are among the most promising research areas providing functional nano-components for data transfer and signal processing. By adopting metalbased optical antennas as a disruptive technological vehicle, we demonstrate that these two device-generating technologies can be interfaced to create an electronically-driven self-emitting unit. This nanoscale plasmonic transmitter operates by injecting electrons in a contacted tunneling antenna feedgap. Under certain operating conditions, we show that the antenna enters a

Abstract.A rigorous theory of photon emission accompanied inelastic tunnelling inside the gap of plasmonic nanoantennas has been developed. The disappointingly low efficiency of the electrical excitation of surface plasmon polaritons in these structures can be increased by orders of magnitude when a resonant tunnelling structure is incorporated inside the gap. Resonant tunnelling assisted surface plasmon emitter may become a key element in future electrically-driven nanoplasmonic circuits. I IntroductionPlasmonic nanoantennas attract much attention due to their ability at enhancing and controlling effectively the spontaneous emission rate of quantum emitters (molecules, quantum dots and so on) [1][2][3][4]. This unique asset has already been put into productive use in optically driven nanoantennas [3][4], primarily for sensing applications. But at the same time, the progress in integrated nanoplasmonic circuits has been impeded by the lack of efficient electrically-pumped sub-wavelength sources of light. For example, semiconductor lasers that enable present day photonic integrated topics suffer from high threshold and low efficiency when scaled down the sub-wavelength dimensions [5]. Given that, electrically-driven plasmonic nanoantennas appear to be a logical approach to the problem due to its apparent simplicity, as no nanoscale p-n junction needs to be formed and the light confinement is easily achieved in the vicinity of surface plasmon polariton (SPP) resonance.Excitation of plasmonic oscillations (both propagating and localized) with electron tunnelling is far from being a new topicit predates the first appearance of the term "plasmonics" by decades., but as we show below, it deserves a second look. Starting with the pioneering 1976 work [6] by Lambe and McCarthy, tunnelling excitation of surface plasmonic waves in planar Metal-Insulator-Metal (MIM) structures had been an object of plentiful experimental [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] and theoretical [16][17][18][19][20] studies. These investigations had been given an impetus by the invention of Scanning Tunnelling Microscope (STM) at the end of 1980's as numerous intensive studies of excitation of plasmonic modes with STM tips has been since performed [21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29]. With the advent of nanophotonics the focus of research on SPP electrical excitation has gradually shifted to the development of miniature light sources as can be learned from recent reports [30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41] and review [42] by García de Abajo.The results of the experimental measurements often differ from each other and from theoretical estimates by as much as an order of magnitude or more [30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41]. This is expected, given the great variety of experimental conditions as well as equally great diversity of theoretical approaches. Overall, though, it comes as no surprise that the most serious disadvantage of the electron tunnelling mechanism for the electrical excitation of SPP is its low quantum ef...

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KEYWORDS. Hot electron photoemission; plasmonic nanostructures; surface photoelectric effect; volume photoelectric effect; transition absorption ABSTRACT. We study mechanisms of photoemission of hot electrons from plasmonic nanoparticles. We analyze the contribution of "transition absorption", i.e., loss of energy of