Amplifying the Interaction Between Two Identical Metallic Nanoparticles with a Large Interface Distance Based on the Strong Coupling-Like Phenomenon Involving Molecular J-aggregates

• Published in: Plasmonics (Norwell, Mass.) Mass.), 2018-08, Vol.13 (4), p.1403-1407
• Main Authors: Song, Gang, Feng, Xin, Duan, Gao-Yan, Chen, Yuan-Yuan, Wang, Chen, Zhang, Peng-Fei, Yu, Li
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Aggregates; Amplification; Biochemistry; Biological and Medical Physics; Biophysics; Biotechnology; Chemistry; Chemistry and Materials Science; Coupling (molecular); Finite difference method; Finite difference time domain method; Molecular chains; Nanoparticles; Nanotechnology; Quantum cryptography; Scattering; Time domain analysis
• ISSN: 1557-1955; 1557-1963
• DOI: 10.1007/s11468-017-0644-8

We introduce a new way to amplify the interaction between two identical metallic nanoparticles with a large interface distance (≥the radius of each nanoparticle). The proposed structure consists of two identical metallic nanoparticles embedded in molecular J-aggregates and the strong coupling-like phenomenon is described by the scattering spectra. Finite difference time domain (FDTD) method is employed to simulate this structure and the simulation results match the experiment well (Eizner et al., Nano Lett 15:6215–6221 2015 ; Lin et al., Nano Lett 15:4699–4703 2015 ; Zengin et al., Phys Rev Lett 114:157401 2015 ). Molecular J-aggregates take important roles in the strong coupling-like phenomenon and can be used to amplify the interaction between the particles. The scattering spectra of this proposed structure have two separated peaks, whose shifts are larger than those in the air with the interface distance decreasing. The coupling strength between the nanoparticles and the amplification of the interaction can be tuned by the incident polarization. This structure has potential applications in the field of quantum communications such as the quantum network, the quantum key distributions, and so on.