Active Quantum Nanophotonics

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• Ortwin Hess, Imperial College London
• Wednesday 12 June 2019, 14:00-15:00
• Watson Building LT A (G23).

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Dr Miguel Navarro-Cia.

Plasmonic nanomaterials have the unique ability to confine light in extremely sub-wavelength volumes and massively enhance electromagnetic fields. With sufficient field enhancement, one enters the strong- coupling regime, where the energy exchange between the excited states of molecules/materials and plasmons is faster than the de-coherence processes of the system. As a result, the excitonic state of the molecule becomes entangled with the photonic mode, forming hybrid excitonic-photonic states. These hybrid-states are part light, part matter and allow for characteristic Rabi oscillations of the atomic excitations to be observed. Until recently, the conditions for achieving such strong-coupling were most commonly met at cryogenic temperatures such that de-coherence processes are suppressed. As a major step forward, we have recently demonstrated room-temperature strong coupling of single emitters¹ to ultra-confined light fields in plasmonic resonators² at ambient conditions which is of immense interest for a practical implementation of nanophotonic quantum quantum technologies at room temperature.

In the talk I shall illuminate the horizons for active nanophotonics, discussing recently demonstrated room- temperature strong coupling of single molecules in a plasmonic nano-cavity¹ and near-field strong coupling of single quantum dots² as well as strong coupling and exceptional points in active hyperbolic metamaterials³ and chart an outline how nanoplasmonic room-temperature strong coupling provides a route to an innovative route towards single-molecule immunoassay sensing. Embracing topological metamaterials⁴ with quantum gain on the nanoscale I shall also shed light on the potential of (quantum-) metamaterials⁵ and show how quantum chaos is enabling control of nonlinear spatio-temporal chaos⁶.

1. Chikkaraddy, R. et al. Single-molecule strong coupling at room temperature in plasmonic nanocavities. Nature 535, 127–130 (2016).
2. Groß, H., Hamm, J. M., Tufarelli, T., Hess, O. & Hecht, B. Near-field strong coupling of single quantum dots. Science Advances 4, eaar4906 (2018).
3. Vaianella, F., Hamm, J. M., Hess, O. & Maes, B. Strong Coupling and Exceptional Points in Optically Pumped Active Hyperbolic Metamaterials. ACS Photonics 5, 2486–2495 (2018).
4. Saba, M., Hamm, J. M., Baumberg, J. J. & Hess, O. Group Theoretical Route to Deterministic Weyl Points in Chiral Photonic Lattices. Physical Review Letters 119, (2017).
5. Tarasenko, I. I., Page, A. F., Hamm, J. M. & Hess, O. Nonlocal quantum gain facilitates loss compensation and plasmon amplification in graphene hyperbolic metamaterials. Phys. Rev. B 99 , 115430 (2019).
6. Bittner, S. et al. Suppressing spatiotemporal lasing instabilities with wave-chaotic microcavities. 7 (2018).

This talk is part of the Metamaterials and Nanophotonics Group Seminars series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• Bham Talks
• Metamaterials and Nanophotonics Group Seminars
• Watson Building LT A (G23)
• What's on in Physics?

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