title: Single-photon excitation of surface plasmon polaritons.
abstract: We provide the quantum-mechanical description of the excitation of surface plasmon polaritons on metal surfaces by single photons. An attenuated-reflection setup is described for the quantum excitation process in which we find remarkably efficient photon-to-surface plasmon wave-packet transfer. Using a fully quantized treatment of the fields, we introduce the Hamiltonian for their interaction and study the quantum statistics during transfer with and without losses in the metal.
authors.affiliation: School of Mathematics and Physics, Queen's University, Belfast BT7 1NN, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: M S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Tame
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Ballester
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Paternostro
authors.forename: A V
authors.initials: AV
authors.lastname: Zayats
authors.forename: M S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Kim