Separating enhancement from loss: plasmonic nanocavities in the weak coupling regime

By modifying the density of optical states at the location of an emitter, weak cavity-emitter coupling can enable a host of potential applications in quantum optics, from the development of low- threshold lasers to brighter single-photon sources for quantum cryptography. Although some of the first demonstrations of spontaneous emission modification occurred in metallic structures, it was only after the recent demonstration of cavity quantum electrodynamics effects in dielectric optical cavities that metal-based optical cavities were considered for quantum optics applications. Advantages of metal-optical cavities include their compatibility with a large variety of emitters and their broadband cavity spectra, which enable enhancement of spectrally-broad emitters. Here, we demonstrate a metal- based nanocavity structure that achieves radiative emission rate enhancements of 1000, opening up the possibility of pursuing cavity electrodynamics investigations with intrinsically broad optical emitters, including organic dyes and colloidal quantum dots.