The strong interaction of individual quantum emitters with resonant cavities is of fundamental interest for understanding light–matter interactions. Plasmonic cavities hold the promise of attaining the strong coupling regime even under ambient conditions and within subdiffraction volumes. Recent experiments revealed strong coupling between individual plasmonic structures and multiple organic molecules; however, strong coupling at the limit of a single quantum emitter has not been reported so far. Here we demonstrate vacuum Rabi splitting, a manifestation of strong coupling, using silver bowtie plasmonic cavities loaded with semiconductor quantum dots (QDs). A transparency dip is observed in the scattering spectra of individual bowties with one to a few QDs, which are directly counted in their gaps. A coupling rate as high as 120 meV is registered even with a single QD, placing the bowtie-QD constructs close to the strong coupling regime. These observations are verified by polarization-dependent experiments and validated by electromagnetic calculations.

The influence of polarity, viscosity, and hydrogen bond donating ability of the medium on the fluorescence behavior of crystal violet lactone (CVL), which undergoes excited state electron transfer reaction and exhibits dual fluorescence from two different electronic states, termed as CT(A) and CT(B), has been studied in six different room temperature ionic liquids (ILs) using steady state and time-resolved emission techniques. It is shown that the excited state CT(A) --> CT(B) transformation and dual fluorescence of CVL can be controlled by appropriate choice of the ILs. While dual fluorescence of CVL is clearly observed in pyrrolidinium IL, the molecule exhibits a single fluorescence band in ammonium IL. While the second emission from the CT(B) state can barely be seen in 1,3-dialkylimidazolium ILs, dual fluorescence is quite prominent in 1-butyl-2,3-dimethylimidazolium IL, [bmMim][Tf(2)N]. These contrasting results have been explained taking into account the hydrogen bonding interactions of the 1,3-dialkylimidazolium ions (mediated through the C(2)-hydrogen) with CVL and the viscosity of the ILs. The excited state CT(A) --> CT(B) reaction kinetics has been studied in IL by monitoring the time-evolution of the CT(B) emission in [bmMim][Tf(2)N]. The solvation dynamics in this IL has been studied by following the dynamic fluorescence Stokes shift of C153, which is used as a probe molecule. A comparison of the excited state reaction time and solvation time suggests that the rate of the CT(A) --> CT(B) reaction in moderately viscous ILs is primarily dictated by the rate of solvation. Very little or negligible excitation wavelength dependence of the emission behavior of CVL can be observed in these ILs.

The fluorescence behavior of 4-(N,N'-dimethylamino) benzonitrile has been studied in room temperature ionic liquids (ILs) as a function of temperature, excitation wavelength, and exposure time. Dual emission from the locally excited (LE) and intramolecular charge transfer (ICT) states of the molecule has been observed and the relative intensities of the two emission bands and the peak position of the ICT emission are found consistent with the viscosity and polarity of the ILs. Temperature dependence study reveals a blue shift of the ICT emission peak with lowering of temperature indicating that under this condition the emission occurs from incompletely solvated state of the molecule. The observed excitation wavelength dependence of the emission behavior has been attributed to the microheterogeneity of the media. Exposure of the solution to the exciting radiation under very mild condition is found to influence the relative intensities of the two emission bands; an enhancement of the LE emission accompanied by a slight decrease of the ICT emission is observed. The emission intensities, however, return almost to their original values when the exposed solution is kept in the dark. The observation has been attributed to photoreaction of the exposed molecules and the recovery to replenishment of phototransformed molecules by the surrounding unexposed molecules. Fluorescence recovery after photobleaching has been studied by multiphoton confocal fluorescence microscopic technique to obtain insight into the recovery dynamics. The diffusion coefficient estimated from this study is found to be lower than that predicted by the Stokes-Einstein equation by a factor of nearly 7 indicating the microheterogeneous nature of the ILs.