Bistable optical response of a nanoparticle heterodimer: Mechanism, phase diagram, and switching time

Abstract

We conduct a theoretical study of the bistable optical response of a nanoparticle heterodimer comprised of a closely spaced semiconductor quantum dot and a metal nanoparticle. The bistable nature of the response results from the interplay between the quantum dot's optical nonlinearity and its selfaction (feedback) originating from the presence of the metal nanoparticle. The feedback is governed by a complex valued coupling parameter G = G R + iG I . We calculate the bistability phase diagram within the system's parameter space: spanned by G R , G I , and , the latter being the detuning between the driving frequency and the transition frequency of the quantum dot. Additionally, switching times from the lower stable branch to the upper one (and vice versa) are calculated as a function of the intensity of the driving field. The conditions for bistability to occur can be realized, for example, for a heterodimer comprised of a closely spaced CdSe (or CdSe/ZnSe) quantum dot and a gold nanosphere. © 2013 AIP Publishing LLC. [http://dx

Tailoring optical response of a hybrid comprising a quantum dimer emitter strongly coupled to a metallic nanoparticle

“…As shown below, these two play an important role in understanding the hybrid's optical response. The nonlinearities introduced by these renormalizations are similar to those found for a two-level system close to a MNP [3,9,12], except that more levels are involved here.…”

“…This work is an extension of works performed earlier by us [9,12] and other authors [8,11] on the optical response of single two-level molecules coupled to an MNP. These earlier studies revealed the interesting possibility of a bistable optical response for such nanocomposites, arising from the self-action of the molecular excitation on itself through the reflection of the electric field generated by it on the MNP.…”

“…The intriguing features of these systems arise from the hybridization of different types of optical excitations, in particular, excitons (in the quantum emitter) and plasmons (in the metal). The exciton-plasmon coupling can drastically modify the optical response of hybrids, leading to interesting physical phenomena, such as optical bistability [8][9][10][11][12], exciton-induced transparency [13], enhancement of Rabi oscillations [14], suppression of quantum coherence via infrared-driven coherent exciton-plasmon coupling [15,16], florescence [17,18], Förster energy transfer [19][20][21][22], photoluminescence quenching [23], Fano-like absorption [8,[24][25][26][27][28], and other exciting effects [29][30][31][32][33][34]. These phenomena may have a strong impact on the development of active nanophotonic devices and metamaterials (e.g., optical switches, singlephoton sources, biosensors).…”

Resonance fluorescence spectrum of aΛ-type quantum emitter close to a metallic nanoparticle

“…We will assume that ω 31 ≈ ω 32 . In what follows we consider that the following condition holds: µ 13 = µû y , and µ 23 = µû x , whereas the direction of detection of the fluorescent field is perpendicular to the plane XY which contains the electric dipole moments µ 13 and µ 23 .…”

“…The ultracompact optical mode volume achieved in plasmon nanostructures leads to a large resonant enhancement of the local field near the MNP [1][2][3][4], as well as the modification of spontaneous emission rates of the emitter's optical transitions [5][6][7][8][9][10][11]. The exciton-plasmon coupling has received a great deal of attention leading to interesting phenomena like changes in photoluminescence lifetimes [12], in photon statistics [13], in the resonance fluorescence [14][15][16][17][18][19], in plasmon-induced quantum interference effects [20][21][22], in the control over population dynamics [23][24][25][26], and over nonlinear optical processes [27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34].…”