Measuring the mode volume of plasmonic nanocavities using coupled optical emitters

Metallic optical systems can confine light to deep sub-wavelength dimensions, but verifying the level of confinement at these length scales typically requires specialized techniques and equipment for probing the near-field of the structure. We experimentally measured the confinement of a metal-based optical cavity by using the cavity modes themselves as a sensitive probe of the cavity characteristics. By perturbing the cavity modes with conformal dielectric layers of sub-nm thickness using atomic layer deposition, we find the exponential decay length of the modes to be less than 5% of the free-space wavelength (\lambda) and the mode volume to be of order \lambda^3/1000. These results provide experimental confirmation of the deep sub-wavelength confinement capabilities of metal-based optical cavities.