Resonance Fluorescence of a Quantum Dot near a Metallic Nanoparticle: Quantum Interference Effects

Abstract

In recent years, significant attention was given to the quantum or nonlinear optical properties of semiconductor quantum dots coupled to plasmonic nanostructures. A phenomenon that was studied is the modification of the resonance fluorescence spectrum of the quantum dot by the presence of the plasmonic nanostructure. The most common plasmonic nanostructure studied is the metallic (mainly gold or silver) nanosphere and, in most studies, the quantum dot is modeled as a two-level quantum system. In this work, we model the quantum dot structure with a three-level V-type quantum system, which can naturally arise in quantum dots, and study the resonance fluorescence spectrum near a metallic nanosphere. We show that the present system leads to quantum interference effects due to the presence of the metallic nanoparticle and specifically due to the anisotropic Purcell effect that occurs in the photon emission of the quantum dot near the metallic nanosphere. We then study the resonance fluorescence spectrum for different distances between the quantum dot and the metallic nanosphere, and show that the resonance fluorescence spectrum changes significantly from a single-peak spectrum to a multipeak spectrum. The effects of quantum interference in the resonance fluorescence spectrum are also explored.