A multiple-scattering polaritonic-operator method for hybrid arrays of metal nanoparticles and quantum emitters

Abstract

We present a new technique for the study of hybrid collections of quantum emitters (atoms, molecules, quantum dots) with nanoparticles. The technique is based on a multiple-scattering polaritonic-operator formalism in conjunction with an electromagnetic coupled dipole method. Apart from collections of quantum emitters and nanoparticles, the method can equally treat the interaction of a collection of quantum emitters with a single nano-object of arbitrary shape in which case the nano-object is treated as a finite three-dimensional lattice of point scatterers. We have applied our method to the case of linear array (chain) of dimers of quantum emitters and metallic nanoparticles wherein the corresponding (geometrical and physical) parameters of the dimers are chosen so as the interaction between the emitter and the nanoparticle lies in the strong-coupling regime in order to enable the formation of plexciton states in the dimer. In particular, for a linear chain of dimers, we show that the corresponding light spectra reveal a multitude of plexciton modes resulting from the hybridization of the plexciton resonances of each individual dimer in a manner similar to the tight-binding description of electrons in solids.