Non-Local Control of Single Surface Plasmon

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the first experimental evidence of non-local control over single surface plasmon interference via entanglement with a photon, advancing hybrid quantum systems for information processing.

Contribution

It reports the novel experimental realization of photon-plasmon entanglement and non-local control of plasmon interference, bridging quantum optics and plasmonics.

Findings

Successful photon-plasmon entanglement achieved.

Non-local control of plasmon interference demonstrated.

Paves the way for hybrid quantum information networks.

Abstract

Quantum entanglement is a stunning consequence of the superposition principle. This universal property of quantum systems has been intensively explored with photons, atoms, ions and electrons. Collective excitations such as surface plasmons exhibit quantum behaviors. For the first time, we report an experimental evidence of non-local control of single plasmon interferences through entanglement of a single plasmon with a single photon. We achieved photon-plasmon entanglement by converting one photon of an entangled photon pair into a surface plasmon. The plasmon is tested onto a plasmonic platform in a Mach-Zehnder interferometer. A projective measurement on the polarization of the photon allows the non-local control of the interference state of the plasmon. Entanglement between particles of various natures paves the way to the design of hybrid systems in quantum information networks.