Regular Article

Quantum plasmonics with multi-emitters: application to stimulated Raman adiabatic passage

¹ Dipartimento di Fisica e Chimica dell’Università di Palermo, via Archirafi 36, 90123 Palermo, Italy
² INFN Sezione di Catania, Catania, Italy
³ Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire Carnot de Bourgogne, CNRS UMR 6303, Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté, BP 47870, 21078 Dijon, France
⁴ Department of Physics, Chalmers University of Technology, 412 96 Göteborg, Sweden
⁵ Department of Microtechnology and Nanoscience – MC2, Chalmers University of Technology, 412 96 Göteborg, Sweden
⁶ Wigner Research Center for Physics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Konkoly-Thege Miklos ut 29-33, 1121 Budapest, Hungary
⁷ Dipartimento di Matematica e Informatica dell’Università di Palermo, via Archirafi 34, 90123 Palermo, Italy

^a e-mail: sguerin@u-bourgogne.fr

Received: 2 July 2018
Received in final form: 22 October 2018
Published online: 21 December 2018

Abstract

We construct a mode-selective effective model describing the interaction of the localised surface plasmon polaritons (LSPs) supported by a spherical metal nanoparticle (MNP) with N quantum emitters (QEs) in an arbitrary geometric arrangement. Simplifying previously presented procedures, we develop a formulation in which the field response in the presence of the MNP can be decomposed into orthogonal modes, expanding the Green tensor of the system in the spherical vector harmonics basis and using the generalized global Löwdin orthogonalization algorithm. We investigate the possibility of using the LSPs as mediators of an efficient control of population transfer between two QEs. We show that a Stimulated Raman Adiabatic Passage (STIRAP) configuration allows such a transfer via a decoherence-free dark state for a specific range of angular distances between the QEs, when they are located very close to the MNP. The transfer is otherwise blocked. We explain this blockade by the destructive superposition of all the plasmonic modes.