Controlled excitations of surface plasmons via optical soliton photons in the quantum regime

Abstract

We examine the quantum dynamics of surface plasmons weakly coupled to optical soliton photons in a metal-dielectric-nonlinear Kerr medium interface. We consider a photon-number-dependent coupling model which is a heuristic extension of the classical soliton excitation of surface plasmons in the quantum limit. The coupling coefficient additionally depends on the distance between the dielectric and the metal. We propose a practical scheme to control the number of surface plasmons using a Gaussian variation of the metal-dielectric spatial separation. Our numerical simulations show that the curvature of the Gaussian distance profile can be used for controlling the number of surface plasmons.