(401e) Coupling Plasmons In Metal Nanoparticles to Excitons In Semiconductor Nanocrystals

Coupling plasmon resonances in metal nanoparticles to excitons in semiconductor nanocrystals, or quantum dots, opens up new possibilities for light harvesting and management of optical energy at the nanoscale.  These nanoparticles can be synthesized and organized using wet-chemical methods, providing a bottom-up method for the development of nanomaterials with new optical functionality.  Exploiting plasmon-exciton interactions will require a fundamental understanding of the relationship between nanometer-scale structure of hybrid metal-semiconductor materials and their optical properties, particularly in the limit of strong coupling where new optical phenomena can arise.  I will present progress in this direction, including calculations showing that a single quantum dot can induce transparency in a plasmonic nanoresonator, a strategy to overcome radiative losses by coupling to dark plasmon modes, and measurements on a model system consisting of single semiconductor nanocrystals near a metal surface.