Dyadic Green Function Approach to Multichromophoric Forster Resonance Energy Transfer under Electromagnetic Fluctuations near Metallic Thin Films

TL;DR

This paper develops a dyadic Green function approach to analyze multichromophoric FRET near metallic thin films, revealing complex distance dependence and electromagnetic modulation effects in nanophotonic environments.

Contribution

It generalizes the FRET theory for multichromophore systems near metal surfaces using a dyadic Green function framework, incorporating evanescent electromagnetic fields.

Findings

Evanescent near-field modes significantly modulate FRET rates.

The distance dependence of FRET near silver films is complex.

Metallic thin films alter FRET through scattering Green functions.

Abstract

The near-field spectroscopic information is critically important to determine the Forster resonant energy transfer(FRET) rate and the distance dependence in the vicinity of metal surfaces. The high density of evanescent near-field modes in the vicinity of a metal surface can strongly modulate the FRET in multichromophoric systems. Based on the previous generalized FRET [A. Poudel, X. Chen and M. Ratner, J. Phys. Chem. Lett. 7(2016) 955], the theory of FRET is generalized for the multichromophore aggregates and nonequilibrium situations in the vicinity of evanescent surface electromagnetic waves of nanophotonic structures. The classic dyadic green function (DGF) approach to multichromophoric FRET (MC-FRET) in the existence of evanescent near-field is established. The classic DGF approach provides a microscopic understanding of the interaction between the emission and absorption spectral coupling and the evanescent electromagnetic field. The MC-FRET of the ring structures demonstrates complicated distance dependence in the vicinity of the silver thin film. Given the analytic expression of hyperbolic multi-layer thin film, the generalized coupling due to the metallic thin film is determined by the scattering DGF above the metal surface. The decomposition of the reduced scattering DGF by ignoring $S$ wave in the evanescent wave shows how the interface of the metallic thin films modulates the MC-FRET.