Speaker
Level for award<br> (Hons, MSc, <br> PhD, N/A)?
MSc
Apply to be<br> considered for a student <br> award (Yes / No)?
No
Would you like to <br> submit a short paper <br> for the Conference <br> Proceedings (Yes / No)?
Yes
Main supervisor (name and email)<br>and his / her institution
Mark Tame, tame@ukzn.ac.za
Please indicate whether<br>this abstract may be<br>published online<br>(Yes / No)
No
Abstract content <br> (Max 300 words)<br><a href="http://events.saip.org.za/getFile.py/access?resId=0&materialId=0&confId=34" target="_blank">Formatting &<br>Special chars</a>
Plasmonics is the study of the interaction of light and conduction electrons at metal-dielectric interfaces. Here, surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) are hybrid photon-electron excitations that can be confined to subdiffraction scales. This feature affords enhanced coupling of emitter systems (e.g. quantum dots) to SPPs, making them suitable candidates for a wide range of on-chip quantum photonic components – most notably single-photon sources. This potential use of SPPs, along with the nonlinearity provided by emitter systems, opens up quantum plasmonics as a potential realisation of quantum information processing. In this setting, the excitation of single SPPs on waveguides via single photons and the confirmation of single-photon states upon output is an important goal. In our work we experimentally probe plasmonic waveguides consisting of gold stripes with surface-relief diffraction gratings at either end (input and output). Single photons generated via parametric down-conversion were coupled into SPP modes by focusing them onto the input grating using a diffraction-limited microscope. A Hanbury-Brown and Twiss setup is then used with single-photon detectors and counting modules to determine a second order correlation coefficient of g(2)(0)=0.30 ±0.15 from the output grating signal. A value less than 0.5 is indicative of single-excitation states. Our study serves as a first step in developing the capacity to explore further the quantum properties of single SPPs and their application to quantum information processing.
