Photochromic engineering of radiative decay rate in plasmon–emitter coupling

Abstract

The development of advanced plasmonic applications is centered on the achievement of active devices. Active plasmonic nanostructures exhibiting tunable resonances have the potential to provide smart materials with a wide range of applications in optoelectronics, including sensing and logic operations. Here, we use finite-difference time-domain simulations to compare the optical properties of nanocones and nanocylinders embedded in two different states of a photochromic medium, first considering a plane wave illumination and then a point dipole one. We show that the photochromic transition induces strong coupling behavior for both illuminations, and it allows a nanocone to effectively enhance one emitter’s emission at one wavelength and quench another emitter at a different wavelength.