Abstract
We provide the quantum-mechanical description of the excitation of surface plasmon polaritons on metal surfaces by single photons. An attenuated-reflection setup is described for the quantum excitation process in which we find remarkably efficient photon-to-surface plasmon wave-packet transfer. Using a fully quantized treatment of the fields, we introduce the Hamiltonian for their interaction and study the quantum statistics during transfer with and without losses in the metal.
- Received 21 April 2008
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.101.190504
©2008 American Physical Society