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arXiv · 2006.15219

Two-photon spontaneous emission in atomically thin plasmonic nanostructures

Y. Muniz·A. Manjavacas·C. Farina·D. A. R. Dalvit·W. J. M. Kort-Kamp
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Abstract

The ability to harness light-matter interactions at the few-photon level plays a pivotal role in quantum technologies. Single photons - the most elementary states of light - can be generated on-demand in atomic and solid state emitters. Two-photon states are also key quantum assets, but achieving them in individual emitters is challenging because their generation rate is much slower than competing one-photon processes. We demonstrate that atomically thin plasmonic nanostructures can harness two-photon spontaneous emission, resulting in giant far-field two-photon production, a wealth of resonant modes enabling tailored photonic and plasmonic entangled states, and plasmon-assisted single-photon creation orders of magnitude more efficient than standard one-photon emission. We unravel the two-photon spontaneous emission channels and show that their spectral line-shapes emerge from an intricate interplay between Fano and Lorentzian resonances. Enhanced two-photon spontaneous emission in two-dimensional nanostructures paves the way to an alternative efficient source of light-matter entanglement for on-chip quantum information processing and free-space quantum communications.

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Y. Muniz, A. Manjavacas, C. Farina, D. A. R. Dalvit, W. J. M. Kort-Kamp. 2020-06-26. Two-photon spontaneous emission in atomically thin plasmonic nanostructures. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.125.033601

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