Quantum Plasmonics

Revisiting Quantum Optics with single surface plasmons

Surface plasmons are waves of electron density propagating at the interface between a metal and a dielectric. They confine the electric field in a tiny volume, and this property makes them particularly interesting candidate to convey optical signal through nanometric structures and devices that are much smaller than conventional optics. Moreover, theoretical models predict that the quantum behavior of plasmons is identical to the quantum behavior of photons. Thus, many physicists nowadays study the opportunity to use plasmons instead of photons for quantum information related applications.

Quantum plasmonics aims at reproducing experimentally the landmark experiments of quantum optics using single surface plasmons. One of the most famous of these experiments has been performed around 30 years ago by Hong, Ou and Mandel : they observed that two indistinguishable photons reaching a 50/50 beamsplitter using two distincts input ports would exit the same device by two separated output ports, a phenomenon since called photon coalescence. Our team performed a plasmonic version of the HOM experiment and we could observe both the coalescence but also an anti-coalescence effect in specific conditions. We also investigated a variety of other situations, such as the hybrid antanglement between a plasmon and a photon, the non-local control of a plasmon state, or the observation of plasmonic N00N fringes.

CURRENT AND PAST MEMBERS OF THE PROJECT

	Dr. Benjamin Vest Associate Professor of Optics and Photonics benjamin.vest@institutoptique.fr Phone / Office : +1 33 64 53 32 74 / R2.54
	Dr. Marie-Christine Dheur Alumnus - PhD 2016, now engineer at Saint-Gobain Recherche PhD Dissertation : "Expériences de plasmonique quantique : dualité onde corpuscule du plasmon de surface et intrication entre un photon et un plasmon de surface."

PUBLICATIONS ASSOCIéES

	Anti-coalescence of bosons on a lossy beamsplitter Les auteurs : Benjamin Vest, Marie-Christine Dheur, Eloïse Devaux, Alexandre Baron, Emmanuel Rousseau, Jean-Paul Hugonin, Jean-Jacques Greffet, Gaëtan Messin, François Marquier DOI : 10.1126/science.aam9353 Science Vol. 356, Issue 6345, pp. 1373-1376 (2017)
	Plasmonic interferences of two-particle N00N states Les auteurs : Benjamin Vest, Ilan Shlesinger, Marie-Christine Dheur, Eloïse Devaux, Jean-Jacques Greffet, Gaëtan Messin, François Marquier DOI : 10.1088/1367-2630/aac24f New J. Phys. 20 053050 (2018)
	Remote preparation of single-plasmon states Les auteurs : Marie-Christine Dheur, Benjamin Vest, Éloïse Devaux, Alexandre Baron, Jean-Paul Hugonin, Jean-Jacques Greffet, Gaétan Messin, and François Marquier DOI : 10.1103/PhysRevB.96.045432 Phys. Rev. B 96, 045432 (2017)
	Single-plasmon interferences Les auteurs : Marie-Christine Dheur, Éloïse Devaux, Thomas W Ebbesen, Alexandre Baron, Jean-Claude Rodier, Jean-Paul Hugonin, Philippe Lalanne, Jean-Jacques Greffet, Gaétan Messin, and François Marquier DOI :  10.1126/sciadv.1501574 Science Advances  Vol. 2, no. 3, e1501574 (2016)