Plasmon-polariton emission from a coherently p-excited quantum dot near a metal interface

We study the emission of surface plasmon polaritons by the decay of the lowest excited state of a quantum emitter when the system is excited by a laser in resonance with a higher excited state ( p-shell excitation). By solving a master equation and by using the quantum-regression theorem, we show how the emission is enhanced by the Purcell effect due to the weak coupling between the emitter and the structured spectral density of plasmon-polariton states of a metal surface. Measurable magnitudes, as the spectrum and the second-order coherence function, are extremely affected by the coherent p-shell excitation. In many cases, such coherent excitation completely masks the physical features of the emission under study. The coexistence between coherent p-shell excitation in the first step of the process and weak coupling in the final step is very important and completely general for any structured reservoir of final states. The advantage of our system is that, just by changing the distance from the quantum emitter to the metal surface, one can access a very rich set of regimes as purely dissipative direct photon emission or emission of plasmon polaritons.