Plasmonic Resonant Intercluster Coulombic Decay

TL;DR

This paper explores how plasmon excitations in nanoclusters can decay resonantly through intercluster Coulomb interactions, enabling nonlocal energy transfer between conjugated nanostructures, with potential applications in nanophotonics and electron sources.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of resonant intercluster Coulomb decay (RICD) as a fundamental process for nonlocal energy transfer in plasmonic nanoclusters, demonstrated with a Na20@C240 dimer example.

Findings

RICD enables nonlocal energy sharing between nanoclusters.

The plasmonic RICD signal can be detected via photoelectron velocity map imaging.

Demonstrated the process in a Na20@C240 dimer system.

Abstract

Light-induced energy confinement in nanoclusters via plasmon excitations influences applications in nanophotonics, photocatalysis, and the design of controlled slow electron sources. The resonant decay of these excitations through the cluster's ionization continuum provides a unique probe of the collective electronic behavior. However, the transfer of a part of this decay amplitude to the continuum of a second conjugated cluster may offer control and efficacy in sharing the energy nonlocally to instigate remote collective events. With the example of a spherically nested dimer Na20@C240 of two plasmonic systems we find that such a transfer is possible through the resonant intercluster Coulomb decay (RICD) as a fundamental process. This plasmonic RICD signal can be experimentally detected by the photoelectron velocity map imaging technique.