Site-Selective, Two-Photon Plasmonic Nanofocusing on a Single Quantum Dot for Near-Room-Temperature Operation

Although the study of single quantum dot (QD) properties without the background noise and dephasing processes caused by surrounding carriers is a crucial issue, the spatial-selective excitation of a single QD is still challenging, due to the diffraction nature of light. Here, we demonstrate a deep subwavelength excitation of a single QD using two-photon plasmonic nanofocusing. Self-aligned plasmonic nanofocusing on a single QD was achieved using metal coated nanopyramid structures. The highly enhanced local electric field generated by the plasmonic nanofocusing gives rise to a large increase in the optical nonlinear effect (i.e., two-photon excitation). As a result of the enhanced field enhancement on the metal-pyramid hybrid structure, the two-photon luminescence intensity was enhanced by a factor of 5000, and the selective excitation of a single QD enabled us to observe InGaN QD emission at near room temperature, due to the large suppression of the background emission. Our approach opens promising perspectives for quantum optics experiments with highly reduced background emissions.