TY - JOUR

T1 - Efficient coupling of photons to a single molecule and the observation of its resonance fluorescence

AU - Wrigge, G.

AU - Gerhardt, I.

AU - Hwang, J.

AU - Zumofen, G.

AU - Sandoghdar, V.

N1 - Funding information: We are grateful to A. Renn for experimental support. This work was financed by the Schweizerische Nationalfond and the ETH Zurich initiative for Quantum Systems for Information Technology (QSIT). Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to V.S.

PY - 2008

Y1 - 2008

N2 - Single dye molecules at cryogenic temperatures exhibit many spectroscopic phenomena known from the study of free atoms and are thus promising candidates for experiments in fundamental quantum optics. However, the existing techniques for their detection have either sacrificed information on the coherence of the excited state or have been inefficient. Here, we show that these problems can be addressed by focusing the excitation light near to the extinction cross-section of a molecule. Our detection scheme enables us to explore resonance fluorescence over nine orders of magnitude of excitation intensity and to separate its coherent and incoherent parts. In the strong excitation regime, we demonstrate the first direct observation of the Mollow fluorescence triplet from a single solid-state emitter. Under weak excitation, we report the detection of a single molecule with an incident power as faint as 600aW, paving the way for studying nonlinear effects with only a few photons.

AB - Single dye molecules at cryogenic temperatures exhibit many spectroscopic phenomena known from the study of free atoms and are thus promising candidates for experiments in fundamental quantum optics. However, the existing techniques for their detection have either sacrificed information on the coherence of the excited state or have been inefficient. Here, we show that these problems can be addressed by focusing the excitation light near to the extinction cross-section of a molecule. Our detection scheme enables us to explore resonance fluorescence over nine orders of magnitude of excitation intensity and to separate its coherent and incoherent parts. In the strong excitation regime, we demonstrate the first direct observation of the Mollow fluorescence triplet from a single solid-state emitter. Under weak excitation, we report the detection of a single molecule with an incident power as faint as 600aW, paving the way for studying nonlinear effects with only a few photons.

KW - Single Molecules

KW - Quantum Optics

KW - Mollow Triplet

KW - Resonance Fluorescence

M3 - Article

VL - 4

SP - 60

EP - 66

JO - Nature physics

JF - Nature physics

SN - 1745-2473

ER -