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Science

A quantum enhancement for plasmonic sensors

Ian S. Osborne

Published Jun 14, 2018• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Quantum Sensing Laser light can induce electronic excitations on metal surfaces. These excitations, or plasmons, are sensitive to the surface environment and are now routinely used in chemical and biological sensing applications. Dowran et al. show that the sensitivity of these plasmonic sensors can be enhanced by using quantum states of light. They replace the laser light (used in the classical configuration) with quantum light, in this case a twin beam of entangled photons; one beam is used as a reference and the other to excite the surface plasmons. They find an appreciable sensitivity enhancement in the quantum configuration. Moreover, the reduced light intensity could also prove useful for the detection of light-sensitive chemical or biological samples. Optica 5 , 628 (2018).

DOI
10.1126/science.360.6394.1199-f

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•Aug 5, 2021•0 citations
Quantum Sensing
Laser light can induce electronic excitations on metal surfaces. These excitations, or plasmons, are sensitive to the surface environment and are now routinely used in chemical and biological sensing applications. Dowran et al. show that the sensitivity of these plasmonic sensors can be enhanced by using quantum states of light. They replace the laser light (used in the classical configuration) with quantum light, in this case a twin beam of entangled photons; one beam is used as a reference and the other to excite the surface plasmons. They find an appreciable sensitivity enhancement in the quantum configuration. Moreover, the reduced light intensity could also prove useful for the detection of light-sensitive chemical or biological samples.
Optica 5 , 628 (2018).
Quantum resources can enhance the sensitivity of a device beyond the classical shot noise limit and, as a result, revolutionize the field of metrology through the development of quantum-enhanced sensors. In particular, plasmonic sensors, which are widely used in biological and chemical sensing applications, offer a unique opportunity to bring such an enhancement to real-life devices. Here, we use bright entangled twin beams to enhance the sensitivity of a plasmonic sensor used to measure local changes in refractive index. We demonstrate a 56% quantum enhancement in the sensitivity of state-of-the-art plasmonic sensor with measured sensitivities on the order of 10−1010^{-10}10−10RIU/Hz/\sqrt{\textrm{Hz}}/Hz​, nearly 5 orders of magnitude better than previous proof-of-principle implementations of quantum-enhanced plasmonic sensors. These results promise significant enhancements in ultratrace label free plasmonic sensing and will find their way into areas ranging from biomedical applications to chemical detection.
The extraordinary sensitivity of plasmonic sensors is well-known in the optics and photonics community. These sensors exploit simultaneously the enhancement and the localization of electromagnetic fields close to the interface between a metal and a dielectric. This enables, for example, the design of integrated biochemical sensors at scales far below the diffraction limit. Despite their practical realization and successful commercialization, the sensitivity and associated precision of plasmonic sensors are starting to reach their fundamental classical limit given by quantum fluctuations of light-known as the shot-noise limit. To improve the sensing performance of these sensors beyond the classical limit, quantum resources are increasingly being employed. This area of research has become known as "quantum plasmonic sensing", and it has experienced substantial activity in recent years for applications in chemical and biological sensing. This review aims to cover both plasmonic and quantum techniques for sensing, and it shows how they have been merged to enhance the performance of plasmonic sensors beyond traditional methods. We discuss the general framework developed for quantum plasmonic sensing in recent years, covering the basic theory behind the advancements made, and describe the important works that made these advancements. We also describe several key works in detail, highlighting their motivation, the working principles behind them, and their future impact. The intention of the review is to set a foundation for a burgeoning field of research that is currently being explored out of intellectual curiosity and for a wide range of practical applications in biochemistry, medicine, and pharmaceutical research.
In the field of optics and photonics, plasmonic sensors have garnered considerable interest due to their outstanding sensitivity and impressive capacity to control light at the nanoscale. These sensors enable the integration of biochemical sensing platforms by exploiting the combination of enhanced and localized electromagnetic fields at the metal–dielectric interface, and they operate effectively below the diffraction limit. The performance of conventional plasmonic sensors, despite their practical development and commercial success, remains inherently constrained by classical noise constraints, owing to the quantum fluctuations of light, known as the shot-noise limit. Recent advances have introduced quantum optical resources such as entangled and squeezed light states to overcome inherent classical restrictions, thus giving rise to the quantum plasmonic sensing field. This interdisciplinary field combines the ability to enhance electric field capabilities with the precision of quantum metrology, enabling ultrasensitive chemical and biological detection that surpasses classical precision thresholds. In the last decades, theoretical models and experimental demonstrations have greatly advanced the development of quantum plasmonic sensors, improving our comprehension of quantum light–matter interactions and facilitating novel nanoscale sensing designs. This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of the fundamental principles, latest developments, and major concepts that have driven progress in quantum plasmonic sensing and shows that quantum components are being integrated into plasmonic systems, thereby transforming optical sensing to the quantum level.
Surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensors can reach the quantum noise limit of the optical readout field in various configurations. We demonstrate that two-mode intensity squeezed states produce a further enhancement in sensitivity compared with a classical optical readout when the quantum noise is used to transduce an SPR sensor signal in the Kretschmann configuration. The quantum noise reduction between the twin beams when incident at an angle away from the plasmonic resonance, combined with quantum noise resulting from quantum anticorrelations when on resonance, results in an effective SPR-mediated modulation that yields a measured sensitivity 5 dB better than that with a classical optical readout in this configuration. The theoretical potential of this technique points to resolving particle concentrations with more accuracy than is possible via classical approaches to optical transduction.
We investigate the use of twin-mode quantum states of light with symmetric statistical features in their photon number for improving intensity-sensitive surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensors. For this purpose, one of the modes is sent into a prism setup where the Kretschmann configuration is employed as a sensing platform and the analyte to be measured influences the SPR excitation conditions. This influence modifies the output state of light that is subsequently analyzed by an intensity-difference measurement scheme. We show that quantum noise reduction is achieved not only as a result of the sub-Poissonian statistical nature of a single mode, but also as a result of the nonclassical correlation of the photon number between the two modes. When combined with the high sensitivity of the SPR sensor, we show that the use of twin-mode quantum states of light notably enhances the estimation precision of the refractive index of an analyte. With this we are able to identify a clear strategy to further boost the performance of SPR sensors, which are already a mature technology in biochemical and medical sensing applications.
Quantum sensing is an emerging field of quantum optics that seeks to take advantage of quantum correlations available in quantum states of light to enable sensitivities beyond the fundamental classical limits. \nThe sensitivity of measurements and sensing apparatus when using classical states of light is limited to the shot-noise limit (SNL), which is achieved with coherent states of light. \n \nTwo-mode squeezed states of light (twin beams) have quantum correlations both in time and space, leading to temporal and spatial squeezing properties. \nSeveral applications can benefit from such noise reduction to enable new approaches, such as quantum-enhanced interferometry, quantum imaging, and quantum sensing. \nThe emergence of quantum technologies has been referred to as the second quantum revolution. \nFor metrology and sensing applications, in particular, it has led to new state-of-the-art sensitivity limits. \n \nIn this thesis, we discuss the implementation of quantum sensing based on squeezed states of light and plasmonic sensors as a platform for the demonstration of real-life quantum sensing. \nWe present a quantum-enhanced plasmonic sensing setup that can detect changes in the refractive index of air beyond the SNL. \nFurthermore, we generalize such experimental apparatus to probe an array of sensors using the quantum correlations present in different spatial locations to demonstrate a parallel quantum-enhanced plasmonic sensing scheme that can simultaneously detect changes in the refractive index of air in multiple locations with a single probing beam. \nThese results prove the applicability of twin beams for real-life applications based on plasmonic sensors. \nThe spatially resolved sensing scheme can be extended to pixel-size sensing of multiple sensors for multi-parameter estimation and detection applications to reach more complex sensing architectures.