Metallo-dielectric hybrid antennas for ultrastrong enhancement of spontaneous emission

TL;DR

This paper introduces metallo-dielectric hybrid antennas that significantly enhance spontaneous emission rates, achieving ultrafast excited-state lifetimes of around 100 femtoseconds with high quantum efficiency, applicable across multiple photonics fields.

Contribution

The authors develop a novel design of hybrid antennas combining metallic nanoparticles with dielectric structures, leveraging plasmonic and cavity QED principles to optimize emission properties.

Findings

Achieved spontaneous emission enhancement with 100 fs excited-state lifetime

Maintained quantum efficiencies of about 80% across broadband operation

Demonstrated potential applications in ultrafast photonics and spectroscopy

Abstract

We devise new optical antennas that reduce the excited-state radiative lifetimes of emitters to the order of 100 femtoseconds while maintaining quantum efficiencies of about 80% at a broadband operation. Here, we combine metallic nanoparticles with planar dielectric structures and exploit design strategies from plasmonic nanoantennas and concepts from Cavity Quantum Electrodynamics to maximize the local density of states and minimize the nonradiative losses incurred by the metallic constituents. The proposed metallo-dielectric hybrid antennas promise important impact on various fundamental and applied research fields, including photophysics, ultrafast plasmonics, bright single photon sources and Raman spectroscopy.