Dresden 2026 – scientific programme
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O: Fachverband Oberflächenphysik
O 12: Scanning probe microscopy: light matter interaction at atomic scales
O 12.4: Talk
Monday, March 9, 2026, 15:45–16:00, HSZ/0403
Coherent coupling between molecular dipoles probed with STML — •Quentin Stein1, Jakob Kuhlke3, Song Jiang1, Tomas Neuman2, Michelangelo Romeo1, Fabrice Scheurer1, Katharina Kaiser3, and Guillaume Schull1 — 1Université de Strasbourg, CNRS, IPCMS, UMR7504, F-67000 Strasbourg, France — 2Institute of Physics, Czech Academy of Sciences Cukrovarnick'a 10, Prague, 16200, Czech Republic — 3Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Physikalishes Institut, 37077 Göttingen, Germany
The clustering of chromophores allows their excited states to hybridize, enabling the formation of coherently coupled dipoles spanning multiple molecules. This is of key importance for optical processes occurring in both artificial and natural molecular assemblies.
Probing these coherently coupled dipoles with atomic-scale precision cannot be achieved through conventional optical techniques because of the diffraction limit set by Abbe's law. This difficulty has recently been overcome by scanning tunneling microscopy induced luminescence (STML), which relies on the extreme confinement of the electromagnetic field in the plasmonic picocavity formed at the apex of a metallic STM-tip. The radiative decay rate of a molecular exciton placed in such a cavity is greatly increased, allowing for the detection of states that are typically optically dark. It also provides nanometer-resolved maps of molecular transition dipole moments, revealing the spatial character of the excitonic states with atomic precision. In this work, we used this approach to investigate the fluorescence of coherently coupled dipoles within simple molecular assemblies.
Keywords: Molecular dipoles; Molecular aggregates; STM; Coherent dipole-dipole coupling; Chromophoric assemblies