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 persp...