Realizing strong light-matter interactions between individual two-level systems and resonating cavities in atomic and solid state systems opens up possibilities to study optical nonlinearities on a single-photon level, which can be useful for future quantum information processing networks. However, these efforts have been hampered by unfavorable experimental conditions, such as cryogenic temperatures and ultrahigh vacuum, required to study such systems and phenomena. Although several attempts to realize strong lightmatter interactions at room temperature using plasmon resonances have been made, successful realizations on the single-nanoparticle level are still lacking. Here, we demonstrate the strong coupling between plasmons confined within a single silver nanoprism and excitons in molecular J aggregates at ambient conditions. Our findings show that deep subwavelength mode volumes V together with quality factors Q that are reasonably high for plasmonic nanostructures result in a strong-coupling figure of merit-Q= ffiffiffi ffi V p as high as ∼6 × 10 3 μm −3=2 , a value comparable to state-of-the-art photonic crystal and microring resonator cavities. This suggests that plasmonic nanocavities, and specifically silver nanoprisms, can be used for room temperature quantum optics. Strong light-matter interactions are not only interesting from a fundamental quantum optics point of view, e.g., for studying entanglement and decoherence, but also because of their relevance for high-end emerging applications such as quantum cryptography [1], quantum networks [2], single-atom lasers [3], ultrafast single-photon switches [4], and quantum information processing [5][6][7]. These phenomena rely on a quantum emitter strongly interacting with a resonant cavity, which leads to cavity and emitter mode hybridization and vacuum Rabi splitting [8]. In the time domain, these strong light-matter interactions manifest themselves as a coherent exchange of energy between the cavity and the emitter occurring on time scales faster than both cavity and emitter dissipative dynamics-a situation that is dramatically different from irreversible spontaneous emission. Traditionally, these quantum optical phenomena have been studied in atomic [9,10] and solid state systems [11][12][13], which are associated with considerable experimental challenges, such as ultrahigh vacuum, cryogenic temperatures, and fabrication issues.A possible solution to these challenges could be to use noble metal nanoparticles instead of photonic crystal and microring resonator cavities [14][15][16][17][18]. This is because metal nanostructures can trap electromagnetic fields on subwavelength scales as so-called surface plasmon excitations. These plasmonic nanocavities possess a number of desirable properties, such as room temperature operation, deep subwavelength mode volumes, and nanoscale dimensions that have been shown to lead to many remarkable phenomena including single-molecule Raman spectroscopy [19][20][21], tip-enhanced imaging [22], ultracompact nanolasers [23], ...
Accurate complex dielectric functions are critical to accelerate the development of rationally designed metal alloy systems for nanophotonic applications, and to thereby unlock the potential of alloying for tailoring nanostructure optical properties. To date, however, accurate alloy dielectric functions are widely lacking. Here, a time‐dependent density‐functional theory computational framework is employed to compute a comprehensive binary alloy dielectric function library for the late transition metals most commonly employed in plasmonics (Ag, Au, Cu, Pd, Pt). Excellent agreement is found between electrodynamic simulations based on these dielectric functions and selected alloy systems experimentally scrutinized in 10 at% composition intervals. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that the dielectric functions can vary in very non‐linear fashion with composition, which paves the way for non‐trivial optical response optimization by tailoring material composition. The presented dielectric function library is thus a key resource for the development of alloy nanomaterials for applications in nanophotonics, optical sensors, and photocatalysis.
Copper nanostructures are ubiquitous in microelectronics and heterogeneous catalysis and their oxidation is a topic of high current interest and broad relevance.
Only little is known about whether single volatile compounds are as efficient in eliciting behavioral responses in animals as the whole complex mixture of a behaviorally relevant odor. Recent studies analysing the composition of volatiles in mammalian blood, an important prey-associated odor stimulus for predators, found the odorant trans-4,5-epoxy-(E)-2-decenal to evoke a typical “metallic, blood-like” odor quality in humans. We therefore assessed the behavior of captive Asian wild dogs (Cuon alpinus), African wild dogs (Lycaon pictus), South American bush dogs (Speothos venaticus), and Siberian tigers (Panthera tigris altaica) when presented with wooden logs that were impregnated either with mammalian blood or with the blood odor component trans-4,5-epoxy-(E)-2-decenal, and compared it to their behavior towards a fruity odor (iso-pentyl acetate) and a near-odorless solvent (diethyl phthalate) as control. We found that all four species displayed significantly more interactions with the odorized wooden logs such as sniffing, licking, biting, pawing, and toying, when they were impregnated with the two prey-associated odors compared to the two non-prey-associated odors. Most importantly, no significant differences were found in the number of interactions with the wooden logs impregnated with mammalian blood and the blood odor component in any of the four species. Only one of the four species, the South American bush dogs, displayed a significant decrease in the number of interactions with the odorized logs across the five sessions performed per odor stimulus. Taken together, the results demonstrate that a single blood odor component can be as efficient in eliciting behavioral responses in large carnivores as the odor of real blood, suggesting that trans-4,5-epoxy-(E)-2-decenal may be perceived by predators as a “character impact compound” of mammalian blood odor. Further, the results suggest that odorized wooden logs are a suitable manner of environmental enrichment for captive carnivores.
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