Molecular optomechanics with atomic antennas
Quantum Physics
2025-05-27 v2
Abstract
A typical surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) system relies on deeply subwavelength field localization in nanoscale plasmonic cavities to enhance both the excitation and emission of Raman-active molecules. Here, we demonstrate that a germanium-vacancy (GeV) defect in diamond can efficiently mediate the excitation process, by acting as a bright atomic antenna. At low temperatures, the GeV's low dissipation allows it to be efficiently populated by the incident field, resulting in a thousand-fold increase in the efficiency of Raman scattering. We show that atomic antenna-enhanced Raman scattering can be distinguished from conventional SERS by tracing the dependence of Stokes intensity on input power.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2412.02106,
title = {Molecular optomechanics with atomic antennas},
author = {Mikolaj K. Schmidt and Alexander A. High and Michael J. Steel},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2412.02106},
year = {2025}
}