Engineering Giant Rabi Splitting via Strong Coupling between Localized and Propagating Plasmon Modes on Metal Surface Lattices: Observation of <i>√N</i> Scaling Rule

Abstract

We present a strong coupling system realized by coupling the localized surface plasmon mode in individual silver nanogrooves and propagating surface plasmon modes launched by periodic nanogroove arrays with varied periodicities on a continuous silver medium. When the propagating modes are in resonance with the localized mode, we observe a √<i>N</i> scaling of Rabi splitting energy, where <i>N</i> is the number of propagating modes coupled to the localized mode. Here, we confirm a giant Rabi splitting on the order of 450-660 meV (<i>N</i> = 2) in the visible spectral range, and the corresponding coupling strength is 160-235 meV. In some of the strong coupling cases studied by us, the coupling strength is about 10% of the mode energy, reaching the ultrastrong coupling regime.