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Optical scattering imaging with sub-nanometer precision based on position-ultra-sensitive giant Lamb shift

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Abstract

The Lamb shift of a quantum emitter in close proximity to a plasmonic nanostructure can be three or more orders of magnitude larger than that in the free space and is ultra-sensitive to the emitter position and polarization. We demonstrate that this large Lamb shift can be sensitively observed from the scattering or absorption spectrum dip shift of the coupled system when the plasmonic nanoparticle or tip scans the emitter. Using these observations, we propose a scanning optical scattering imaging method based on the plasmonic-enhanced Lamb shift with achieves sub-nanometer resolution. Our method is based on the scattering or absorption spectrum of the plasmon-emitter coupling system, which is free of the fluorescence quenching problem and easier to implement in a plasmon-emitter coupling system. In addition, our scheme works even if the quantum emitter is slightly below the dielectric surface, which can bring about broader applications, such as detecting atoms and molecules or quantum dots above or under a surface.

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  1. These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Materials and Technologies, School of Physics, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, 510275, China

    Zeyang Liao, Yu-Wei Lu, Wei Li & Xue-Hua Wang

  2. Quantum Science Center of Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (Guangdong), Shenzhen, 518045, China

    Yu-Wei Lu

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  1. Zeyang Liao
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Correspondence to Wei Li or Xue-Hua Wang.

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Additional information

This work was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (Grant No. 2021YFA1400800), the Key-Area Research and Development Program of Guangdong Province (Grant No. 2018B030329001), the Guangdong Special Support Program (Grant No. 2019JC05X397), and the Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong (Grant Nos. 2021A1515010039, and 2018A030313722). The authors thank R. Liu and X. Zeng for their helpful discussions and Editage for English language editing.

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Liao, Z., Lu, YW., Li, W. et al. Optical scattering imaging with sub-nanometer precision based on position-ultra-sensitive giant Lamb shift. Sci. China Phys. Mech. Astron. 67, 264212 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11433-023-2369-6

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