Enhancement of Resonant Energy Transfer Due to Evanescent-wave from the Metal

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that evanescent waves near metals significantly enhance F"{o}rster resonant energy transfer (FRET), providing a classical calculation method and analyzing effects of environment and geometry on transfer rates.

Contribution

It introduces a classical Green's function approach to calculate FRET rates near metallic structures, including non-local effects and multimer systems, highlighting environmental and geometric influences.

Findings

FRET rate is enhanced by evanescent photon modes near metals.

Derived a general expression for multimer FRET systems.

Environmental and geometric factors significantly influence transfer rates.

Abstract

The high density of evanescent modes in the vicinity of a metal leads to enhancement of the near-field F\"{o}rster resonant energy transfer (FRET) rate. We present a classical approach to calculate the FRET rate based on the dyadic Green's function of an arbitrary dielectric environment, and consider non-local limit of material permittivity in case of metallic halfspace and thin film. In a dimer system, we find that the FRET rate is enhanced due to shared evanescent photon modes bridging a donor and an acceptor. Furthermore, a general expression for the FRET rate for multimer systems is derived. The presence of a dielectric environment and the path interference effect enhance the transfer rate, depending on the combination of distance and geometry.