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Dipole Decay Rates Engineering via Silver Nanocones

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Abstract

A full control of the interaction between confined plasmons and point sources of radiation is a central issue in molecular plasmonics. In this paper, a theoretical contribution towards a physical understanding on the localized surface plasmons excited into metallic nanocones by a point dipole is given. A numerical approach based on the discrete dipole approximation is applied to determine the modifications of the dipole decay rates for varying geometrical parameters of the dipole-metal nanoparticle system. Results declare the centrality of the cone aperture to control the plasmon resonances and to handle the effects it induces on the lifetime of a point emitter. A full spectral tuning of the resonances in the decay rates can be achieved by operating on a unique spatial degree of freedom: by tailoring the aperture alone, total decay rates 105 times higher than the free-space value can be obtained at short distances from the metal in a large region of the spectral range. Quite unexpectedly, size dependence of the antenna is found to have a marginal role if only a lifetime manipulation is desired. It becomes, instead, a crucial aspect of the problem when large quantum yields are required. Results presented in this work shed light on spontaneous emission modification due to interaction with plasmonic nanocones of different shapes and are relevant for a number of applications in the fields of nanoplasmonics and fluorescence microscopy.

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Acknowledgments

This work was funded by Fondazione Cariplo under project no. 2010-0523 and by the European Research Council Starting Grant Project DEDOM, grant agreement no. 207441. For computational facilities, S. D. thanks the Italian Institute of Technology with the cluster administrator Dr. Akhilesh Tanwar, and the CINECA Consortium for its technical support (ISCRA Award N. HP10C1ZQTO, 2011).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Fisica, Università degli Studi di Pavia, Via Bassi, 6, 27100, Pavia, Italy

    Stefania D’Agostino & Lucio Claudio Andreani

  2. National Nanotechnology Laboratory (NNL), Istituto Nanoscienze-CNR, Via per Arnesano 16, 73100, Lecce, Italy

    Fabio Della Sala

  3. Center for Biomolecular Nanotechnologies @UNILE, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Via Barsanti, 73010, Arnesano, Italy

    Fabio Della Sala

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  1. Stefania D’Agostino
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Correspondence to Stefania D’Agostino.

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D’Agostino, S., Della Sala, F. & Andreani, L.C. Dipole Decay Rates Engineering via Silver Nanocones. Plasmonics 8, 1079–1086 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11468-013-9512-3

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