Long-range surface-plasmon-polariton excitation at the quantum level

Abstract

We provide the quantum-mechanical description of the excitation of long-range surface-plasmon polaritons (LRSPPs) on thin metallic strips. The excitation process consists of an attenuated-reflection setup, where efficient photon-to-LRSPP wave-packet transfer is shown to be achievable. For calculating the coupling, we derive the first quantization of LRSPPs in the polaritonic regime. We study quantum statistics during propagation and characterize the performance of photon-to-LRSPP quantum state transfer for single-photons, photon-number states, and photonic coherent superposition states.