Abstract
When light interacts with metal surfaces, it excites electrons, which can form propagating excitation waves called surface plasmon polaritons. These collective electronic excitations can produce strong electric fields localized to subwavelength distance scales1, which makes surface plasmon polaritons interesting for several applications. Many of these potential uses, and in particular those related to quantum networks2, require a deep understanding of the fundamental quantum properties of surface plasmon polaritons. Remarkably, these collective electron states preserve many key quantum mechanical properties of the photons used to excite them, including entanglement3,4 and sub-Poissonian statistics5. Here, we show that a single-photon source coupled to a silver nanowire excites single surface plasmon polaritons that exhibit both wave and particle properties, similar to those of single photons. Furthermore, the detailed analysis of the spectral interference pattern provides a new method to characterize the dimensions of metallic waveguides with nanometre accuracy.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Ralf Vogelgesang for helpful discussions. This work was supported by the EU (QAO, EQUIND, NEDQIT), DFG (SFB/TR21 and FOR730), Landesstiftung BW, NIH and DARPA.
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R.K., B.G., G.B., R.J.S. and A.A.L.N. carried out the experiments; P.R.H., F.J. and J.W. designed and coordinated the experiments; and F.J. wrote the paper. All authors discussed the results, analysed the data and commented on the manuscript.
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Kolesov, R., Grotz, B., Balasubramanian, G. et al. Wave–particle duality of single surface plasmon polaritons. Nature Phys 5, 470–474 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys1278
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys1278
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