Ultrastrong coupling between nanoparticle plasmons and cavity photons at ambient conditions

Denis G. Baranov, Battulga Munkhbat, Elena Zhukova, Ankit Bisht, Adriana Canales, Benjamin Rousseaux, Göran Johansson, Tomasz J. Antosiewicz and Timur Shegai ()
Additional contact information
Denis G. Baranov: Chalmers University of Technology
Battulga Munkhbat: Chalmers University of Technology
Elena Zhukova: Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology
Ankit Bisht: Chalmers University of Technology
Adriana Canales: Chalmers University of Technology
Benjamin Rousseaux: Chalmers University of Technology
Göran Johansson: Chalmers University of Technology
Tomasz J. Antosiewicz: Chalmers University of Technology
Timur Shegai: Chalmers University of Technology

Nature Communications, 2020, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract Ultrastrong coupling is a distinct regime of electromagnetic interaction that enables a rich variety of intriguing physical phenomena. Traditionally, this regime has been reached by coupling intersubband transitions of multiple quantum wells, superconducting artificial atoms, or two-dimensional electron gases to microcavity resonators. However, employing these platforms requires demanding experimental conditions such as cryogenic temperatures, strong magnetic fields, and high vacuum. Here, we use a plasmonic nanorod array positioned at the antinode of a resonant optical Fabry-Pérot microcavity to reach the ultrastrong coupling (USC) regime at ambient conditions and without the use of magnetic fields. From optical measurements we extract the value of the interaction strength over the transition energy as high as g/ω ~ 0.55, deep in the USC regime, while the nanorod array occupies only ∼4% of the cavity volume. Moreover, by comparing the resonant energies of the coupled and uncoupled systems, we indirectly observe up to ∼10% modification of the ground-state energy, which is a hallmark of USC. Our results suggest that plasmon-microcavity polaritons are a promising platform for room-temperature USC realizations in the optical and infrared ranges, and may lead to the long-sought direct visualization of the vacuum energy modification.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-16524-x Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:11:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-020-16524-x

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-16524-x

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().