Inconsistency of basic optical processes in plasmonic nanocomposites

Abstract

Plasmonic nanocomposites, comprising metallic clusters within a semiconductor matrix, exhibit a huge discrepancy between characteristic energies of luminescence, absorption, and generation of photocarriers. This phenomenon, discovered experimentally in InN/In and supported by GaAs/In data, appears because the optical processes occur in spatially different areas which undergo different influence of local plasmons. Manifestations of that in infrared emission and thermally detected absorption are considered using the formalism of electromagnetic enhancement, taking into account the statistics of cluster shapes and the transitions between parallel bands inherent for In.