Quantum Statistics of Surface Plasmon Polaritons in Metallic Stripe Waveguides

TL;DR

This paper investigates the quantum statistical properties of surface plasmon polaritons in metallic stripe waveguides, focusing on excitation, correlations, and loss effects relevant for quantum nanophotonics.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed analysis of quantum statistics and loss effects of surface plasmon polaritons in metallic waveguides, crucial for quantum nanophotonics applications.

Findings

Second order coherence depends linearly on environment

Loss effects are significant for quantum plasmonic devices

Fock state populations are characterized in the experiment

Abstract

Single surface plasmon polaritons are excited using photons generated via spontaneous parametric down-conversion. The mean excitation rates, intensity correlations and Fock state populations are studied. The observed dependence of the second order coherence in our experiment is consistent with a linear uncorrelated Markovian environment in the quantum regime. Our results provide important information about the effect of loss for assessing the potential of plasmonic waveguides for future nanophotonic circuitry in the quantum regime.