Darmstadt 2008 – scientific programme

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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik

Q 6: Quanteninformation (Atome und Ionen II)

Q 6.6: Talk

Monday, March 10, 2008, 17:45–18:00, 1B

Efficient coupling of light to a single molecule and the observation of its fluorescence Mollow triplet — •Martin Pototschnig, Gert Wrigge, Ilja Gerhardt, Jaesuk Hwang, Lutz Petersen, and Vahid Sandoghdar — Laboratory for Physical Chemistry, ETH Zurich, CH-8093 Zurich, Switzerland

Dye molecules in organic matrices are solid-state quantum emitters that can have lifetime limited linewidths at temperatures below 2K. Single molecules in such systems have been conventionally detected with fluorescence excitation spectroscopy, where the molecule is excited via its narrow zero-phonon line and its Stokes-shifted emission is detected. We report here on the coherent detection of a single molecule in transmission. Our experiments in the near- [1,2] and far-field [3] directly show between 5 and 12% dip on the transmission of a laser beam without using any noise suppression methods such as lock-in detection. Our efficient coupling of light to a single molecule has allowed us to study its resonance fluorescence over 9 orders of magnitude. We will show the power dependent coherent scattering and the first direct measurement of the Mollow fluorescence triplet in a solid-state system [3]. In the weak excitation regime we show that it is possible to detect a single molecule by using excitation powers below a femtoWatt. The efficient coupling combined with the coherent nature of extinction detection pave the way for further fundamental quantum optical experiments. [1]I.Gerhardt et. al., PRL 98,033601(2007). [2]I.Gerhardt et. al., OL 32,1420(2007). [3]G.Wrigge et. al., arXiv:0707.3398 to appear in Nature Physics.