Exciton-plasmon interactions in metal-semiconductor nanostructures

Abstract: Semiconductor quantum dots and metal nanoparticles feature very strong light-matter interactions, which has led to their use in many photonic applications such as photodetectors, biosensors, components for telecommunications etc.Under illumination both structures exhibit collective electron-photon resonances, described in the frameworks of quasiparticles as exciton-polaritons for semiconductors and surface plasmon-polaritons for metals.To date these two approaches to controlling light interactions have usually been treated separately, with just a few simple attempts to consider exciton-plasmon interactions in a system consisting of both semiconductor and metal nanostructures.In this work, the exciton-polaritons and surface \plasmon-polaritons are first considered separately, and then combined using the Finite Difference Time Domain numerical method coupled with a master equation for the exciton-polariton population dynamics.To better understand the properties of excitons and plasmons, each quasiparticle is used to investigate two open questions - the source of the Stokes shift between the absorption and luminescence peaks in quantum dots, and the source of the photocurrent increase in quantum dot infrared photodetectors coated by a thin metal film with holes. The combined numerical method is then used to study a system consisting of multiple metal nanoparticles close to a quantum dot, a system which has been predicted to exhibit quantum dot-induced transparency, but is demonstrated to just have a weak dip in the absorption.