Mapping Lamb, Stark, and Purcell Effects at a Chromophore-Picocavity Junction with Hyper-Resolved Fluorescence Microscopy

Abstract

The interactions of the excited states of a single chromophore with static and dynamic electric fields spatially varying at the atomic scale are investigated in a joint experimental and theoretical effort. In this configuration, the spatial extension of the fields confined at the apex of a scanning tunneling microscope tip is smaller than that of the molecular exciton, a property used to generate fluorescence maps of the chromophore with intramolecular resolution. Theoretical simulations of the electrostatic and electrodynamic interactions occurring at the picocavity junction formed by the chromophore, the tip, and the substrate reveal the key role played by subtle variations of Purcell, Lamb, and Stark effects. They also demonstrate that hyper-resolved fluorescence maps of the line shift and linewidth of the excitonic emission can be understood as images of the static charge redistribution upon electronic excitation of the molecule and as the distribution of the dynamical charge oscillation associated with the molecular exciton, respectively.6 MoreReceived 30 April 2021Revised 29 September 2021Accepted 3 November 2021DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevX.12.011012Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.Published by the American Physical SocietyPhysics Subject Headings (PhySH)Research AreasElectroluminescencePlasmonicsTechniquesFirst-principles calculationsScanning tunneling microscopyCondensed Matter, Materials & Applied PhysicsAtomic, Molecular & Optical