Surface Plasmon-Enhanced X-ray Ultraviolet Nonlinear Interactions

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel method to couple X rays with surface plasmon polaritons via X ray to UV spontaneous parametric down conversion, enabling enhanced control of X ray matter interactions at atomic scales.

Contribution

The work demonstrates a new approach to couple X rays with surface plasmons using nonlinear UV processes, overcoming previous energy and momentum limitations.

Findings

X rays can be entangled with UV surface plasmons.

Angular and energy dependence of X rays are affected by SPPs.

Potential for atomic-scale control of X ray interactions.

Abstract

X ray matter interactions are intrinsically weak, and the high energy and momentum of X rays pose significant challenges to applying strong light matter coupling techniques that are highly effective at longer wavelengths for controlling and manipulating radiation. Techniques such as enhanced coupling between light and electrons at a metal dielectric interface or within nanostructures, as well as the Purcell effect where spontaneous emission is amplified near a metallic surface are not applicable to X rays due to their fundamentally different energy and momentum scales. Here we present a novel approach for coupling X rays to surface plasmon polaritons by entangling X ray photons with SPPs in the ultraviolet range through X ray to UV spontaneous parametric down conversion in aluminum. The distinct characteristics of the SPPs are imprinted onto the angular and energy dependence of the detected X ray photons, as demonstrated in this work. Our results highlight the potential to control X rays using SPPs, unlocking exciting opportunities to enhance X ray matter interactions and explore plasmonic phenomena with atomic scale resolution a capability uniquely enabled by X rays.