A quantum plasmonic nanocircuit on a semiconductor platform

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a scalable quantum plasmonic nanocircuit on a semiconductor platform, integrating a quantum dot source with plasmonic waveguides for on-chip quantum photonics applications.

Contribution

It introduces a novel on-chip quantum plasmonic nanocircuit driven by a self-assembled quantum dot, enabling efficient single plasmon excitation and conversion to photons.

Findings

Efficient excitation of narrow-band single plasmons by a quantum dot.

Guidance of plasmons in a two-wire transmission line.

Conversion of plasmons into single photons via an optical antenna.

Abstract

Quantum photonics holds great promise for future technologies such as secure communication, quantum computation, quantum simulation, and quantum metrology. An outstanding challenge for quantum photonics is to develop scalable miniature circuits that integrate single-photon sources, linear optical components, and detectors on a chip. Plasmonic nanocircuits will play essential roles in such developments. Plasmonic components feature ultracompact geometries and can be controlled more flexibly and more energy-efficiently compared to conventional dielectric components due to strong field confinement and enhancement. Moreover, plasmonic components are compatible with electronic circuits, thanks to their deep subwavelength sizes as well as their electrically conducting materials. However, for quantum plasmonic circuits, integration of stable, bright, and narrow-band single photon sources in the structure has so far not been reported. Here we present a quantum plasmonic nanocircuit driven by a self-assembled GaAs quantum dot. The quantum dot efficiently excites narrow-band single plasmons that are guided in a two-wire transmission line until they are converted into single photons by an optical antenna. Our work demonstrates the feasibility of fully on-chip plasmonic nanocircuits for quantum optical applications.