English

Single-molecule spectroscopy near structured dielectrics

Optics 2009-10-31 v1 Atomic Physics

Abstract

We present an analytical approach to the calculation of the linewidth and lineshift of an atom or molecule in the near field of a structured dielectric surface. For soft surface corrugations with amplitude lambda/50, we find variations of the linewidth in the ten percent region. More strikingly, the shift of the molecular resonance can reach several natural linewidths. We demonstrate that the lateral resolution is of the order of the molecule-surface distance. We give a semiquantitative explanation of the outcome of our calculations that is based on simple intuitive models.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.physics/9810013,
  title  = {Single-molecule spectroscopy near structured dielectrics},
  author = {Carsten Henkel and Vahid Sandoghdar},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:physics/9810013},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

to be published in Optics Communications (16 pages, 14 PostScript figures, uses LaTeX packages amsfonts, a4, graphicx, multicol)