Vacuum Rabi splitting and strong coupling dynamics for surface plasmon polaritons and Rhodamine 6G molecules

TL;DR

This study demonstrates strong coupling between surface plasmon polaritons and Rhodamine 6G molecules, revealing vacuum Rabi splitting up to 230 meV and controllable interaction dynamics using lithography.

Contribution

It introduces a method to achieve and control strong coupling between SPPs and molecules with tunable Rabi splitting via lithographic adjustment.

Findings

Vacuum Rabi splitting energies up to 230 meV observed.

All three energy branches of the hybrid system emitted.

Rabi splitting controlled by interaction time with sub-fs precision.

Abstract

We report on strong coupling between surface plasmon polaritons (SPP) and Rhodamine 6G (R6G) molecules, with double vacuum Rabi splitting energies up to 230 and 110 meV. In addition, we demonstrate the emission of all three energy branches of the strongly coupled SPP-exciton hybrid system, revealing features of system dynamics that are not visible in conventional reflectometry. Finally, in analogy to tunable-Q microcavities, we show that the Rabi splitting can be controlled by adjusting the interaction time between waveguided SPPs and R6G deposited on top of the waveguide. The interaction time can be controlled with sub-fs precision by adjusting the length of the R6G area with standard lithography methods.