We present an experimental demonstration of strong coupling between a surface plasmon propagating on a planar silver substrate, and the lowest excited state of CdSe nanocrystals. Variable-angle spectroscopic ellipsometry measurements demonstrated the formation of plasmon-exciton mixed states, characterized by a Rabi splitting of ∼ 82 meV at room temperature. Such a coherent interaction has the potential for the development of plasmonic non-linear devices, and furthermore, this system is akin to those studied in cavity quantum electrodynamics, thus offering the possibility to study the regime of strong light-matter coupling in semiconductor nanocrystals at easily accessible experimental conditions.
@article{arxiv.0903.3248,
title = {Coherent coupling between surface plasmons and excitons in semiconductor nanocrystals},
author = {D. E. Gómez and K. C. Vernon and T. J. Davis and T. L. Nguyen and P. Mulvaney},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0903.3248},
year = {2009}
}