Effective Control of the Optical Bistability of a Three-Level Quantum Emitter near a Nanostructured Plasmonic Metasurface

Hamid R Hamedi,Emmanuel Paspalakis,Vassilios Yannopapas

doi:10.3390/photonics8070285

Hamid R Hamedi, Emmanuel Paspalakis + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/photonics8070285

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Abstract

We study, theoretically, the phenomena optical bistability and multistability of a hybrid quantum-plasmonic system immersed within an optical ring cavity. The hybrid quantum-plasmonic system consists of a three-level V-type quantum emitter and a two-dimensional plasmonic metasurface of gold nanoshells. The quantum emitter and the plasmonic metasurface are placed in close proximity to each other so that a strong quantum interference of spontaneous emission occurs, which enables the strong modification of optical-bistability/ multistability hysteresis curves. Along with this, the strong interaction between the emitter and the plasmonic metasurface allows for active control of the corresponding bistable threshold intensity. Furthermore, we show that by varying the metasurface-emitter separation, a transition from bistability to multistability of the hybrid system is observed. Lastly, by introducing an additional incoherent pumping in the system, we have the emergence of phenomena, such as probe absorption and gain, with or without population inversion. The results may find technological application in on-chip nanoscale photonic devices, optoelectronics and solid-state quantum information science.

Highlights

Coherent control of light using light is very important in optical computing and alloptical communication
We calculate the input–output curves for the quantum-sample medium immersed in the optical ring cavity and compare them with the case where a medium of solely quantum emitters is placed in the cavity
By inserting the quantum-sample medium inside the ring cavity, and for distances d = 0.7c/ωc and d = 0.9c/ωc of the emitter from the metasurface, we observe a significant modification of the area of the hysteresis cycle due to the reduction of the threshold intensity for both the lower and higher branches

Summary

Introduction

Coherent control of light using light is very important in optical computing and alloptical communication. Κ corresponds to the coupling coefficient between upper states |2 and |3 resulting from the occurrence of quantum interference of spontaneous emission in an electromagnetically anisotropic environment [58,59]. Where G(r, r; ω ) (ω = (ω3 + ω2)/2 − ω1) corresponds to the electromagnetic Green’s tensor, r is the position of the quantum emitter and μ0 stands for the free-space electric permittivity. The spectra of Γ⊥ and Γ were directly taken from Figure 3 in [21], where it was demonstrated that Γ is suppressed to such degree that it becomes significantly lower than the decay rate of the quantum emitter in a vacuum. For distances between 0.65c/ωp and c/ωp, Γ⊥ becomes smaller than the corresponding free-space decay rate

Susceptibility

Optical Bistability in a Unidirectional Ring Cavity

Results and Discussion

Conclusions