The dual annihilation of a surface plasmon and a photon by virtue of a three-wave mixing interaction

The enhanced nonlinear interactions that are driven by surface-plasmon resonances have readily been exploited for the purpose of optical frequency conversion in metallic structures. As of yet, however, little attention has been payed to the exact particulate nature of the conversion process. We show evidence that a surface plasmon and photon can annihilate simultaneously to generate a photon having the sum frequency. The signature for this nonlinear interaction is revealed by probing the condition for momentum conservation using a two-beam k-space spectroscopic method that is applied to a gold film in the Kretschmann geometry. The inverse of the observed nonlinear interaction-an exotic form of parametric down-conversion-would act as a source of surface plasmons in the near-field that are quantum correlated with photons in the far-field. (C) 2013 Optical Society of America