Coherent transport of nanowire surface plasmons coupled to quantum dots

The coherent transport of surface plasmons with nonlinear dispersion relations on a metal nanowire coupled to two-level emitters is investigated theoretically. Real-space Hamiltonians are used to obtain the transmission and reflection spectra of the surface plasmons. For the single-dot case, we find that the scattering spectra can show completely different features due to the non-linear quadratic dispersion relation. For the double-dot case, we obtain the interference behavior in transmission and reflection spectra, similar to that in resonant tunneling through a double-barrier potential. Moreover, Fano-like line shape of the transmission spectrum is obtained due to the quadratic dispersion relation. All these peculiar behaviors indicate that the dot-nanowire system provides a one-dimensional platform to demonstrate the bandgap feature widely observed in photonic crystals. (c) 2010 Optical Society of America