Nanoemitters in conducting surfaces: from metals to graphene

Abstract

Metals have traditionally have been avoided in optics, beyond their use as mirrors. This is because they present surface electromagnetic modes (surface plasmons) that, if uncontrolled, absorb energy. In the last few years, advances in fabrication have allow us to tame surface plasmons, so we can profit from their strong field confinement. In this talk we will analyze the field pattern radiated by nanoemitters placed on a metal surface showing that despise the simplicity of the system, the field presents a very rich behavior as a function of both position and frequency. We will also consider the case of emitters placed on metal waveguides and a graphene sheet. Finally we will show how these results can be extended to metal waveguides, and use the resulting electromagnetic fields to modify the interaction between quantum objects (and, for instance, create entanglement between them are relatively large distances).