Couple molecular excitons to surface plasmon polaritons in an organic-dye-doped nanostructured cavity

In this work, we demonstrate experimentally the hybrid coupling among molecular excitons, surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs), and Fabry-Perot (FP) mode in a nanostructured cavity, where a J-aggregates doped PVA (polyvinyl alcohol) layer is inserted between a silver grating and a thick silver film. By tuning the thickness of the doped PVA layer, the FP cavity mode efficiently couples with the molecular excitons, forming two nearly dispersion-free modes. The dispersive SPPs interact with these two modes while increasing the incident angle, leading to the formation of three hybrid polariton bands. By retrieving the mixing fractions of the polariton band components from the measured angular reflection spectra, we find all these three bands result from the strong coupling among SPPs, FP mode, and excitons. This work may inspire related studies on hybrid light-matter interactions, and achieve potential applications on multimode polariton lasers and optical spectroscopy. Published by AIP Publishing.