Manipulating photon emission efficiency with local electronic states in a tunneling gap.
We demonstrate manipulation of photon emission efficiency in a tunneling gap by tuning the rates of elastic and inelastic electron tunneling processes with local electronic states. The artificial local electronic states are created by a scanning tunneling microscope tip on a CuN nanoisland grown on a Cu(100) surface at cryogenic temperature. These local electronic states can either enhance or suppress the excitation of tip-induced surface plasmon modes at specific bias voltages, and thus the induced photon emission rates. A theoretical model quantitatively analyzing inelastic and elastic tunneling processes associated with characteristic electronic states shows good agreement with experiments. We also show that tip-induced photon emission measurement can be used for probing the electronic states in the tunneling gap.
Peng
P
Chen
Weihua
W
Wang
Nian
N
Lin
Shengwang
S
Du