Unveiling the radiative local density of optical states of a plasmonic nanocavity by STM

Atomically-sharp tips in close proximity of metal surfaces create plasmonic nanocavities supporting both radiative (bright) and non-radiative (dark) localized surface plasmon modes. Disentangling their respective contributions to the total density of optical states remains a challenge. Electrolumine...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Martín Jiménez, Alberto, Fernández Domínguez, Antonio Isaac, Lauwaet, Koen, Granados, Daniel, Miranda Soriano, Rodolfo, García Vidal, Fco. José, Otero Martín, Roberto
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2020
País:España
Institución:Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
Repositorio:Biblos-e Archivo. Repositorio Institucional de la UAM
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:repositorio.uam.es:10486/691327
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10486/691327
https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-14827-7
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Nanocavities
Nanophotonics and plasmonics
Optical spectroscopy
Física
Descripción
Sumario:Atomically-sharp tips in close proximity of metal surfaces create plasmonic nanocavities supporting both radiative (bright) and non-radiative (dark) localized surface plasmon modes. Disentangling their respective contributions to the total density of optical states remains a challenge. Electroluminescence due to tunnelling through the tip-substrate gap could allow the identification of the radiative component, but this information is inherently convoluted with that of the electronic structure of the system. In this work, we present a fully experimental procedure to eliminate the electronic-structure factors from the scanning tunnelling microscope luminescence spectra by confronting them with spectroscopic information extracted from elastic current measurements. Comparison against electromagnetic calculations demonstrates that this procedure allows the characterization of the meV shifts experienced by the nanocavity plasmonic modes under atomic-scale gap size changes. Therefore, the method gives access to the frequency-dependent radiative Purcell enhancement that a microscopic light emitter would undergo when placed at such nanocavity