Quantum surface effects on quantum emitters coupled to surface plasmon polariton

Abstract: As an ideal platform to explore strong quantized light-matter interactions, surface plasmon polariton (SPP) has inspired many applications in quantum technologies. It was recently found that quantum surface effects (QSEs) of the metal, including nonlocal optical response, electron spill-out, and Landau damping, contribute additional loss sources to the SPP. Such a deteriorated loss of the SPP severely hinders its realization of long-distance quantum interconnect. Here, we investigate the non-Markovian dynamics of quantum emitters (QEs) coupled to a common SPP in the presence of the QSEs in a planar metal-dielectric nanostructure. A mechanism to overcome the dissipation of the QEs caused by the lossy SPP is discovered. We find that, as long as the QE-SPP bound states favored by the QSEs are formed, a dissipationless entanglement among the QEs is created. It leads to that the separated QEs are coherently correlated in a manner of the Rabi-like oscillation mediated by the SPP even experiencing the metal absorption. Our study on the QSEs refreshes our understanding of the light-matter interactions in the absorptive medium and paves the way for applying the SPP in quantum interconnect.