Photon antibunching control in a quantum dot and metallic nanoparticle hybrid system with non-Markovian dynamics.

Photon-number statistics of the emitted photons from a quantum dot placed in the vicinity of a metallic nanoparticle (with either shell or solid-sphere geometry) in the non-Markovian regime is investigated theoretically. In the model scheme, the quantum dot is considered as a three-level system in Lambda-type configuration with two transition channels, one of which is coupled to the plasmon mode while the other one is driven by a classical field. Plasmon resonance modes of a nanoshell, in contrast of a nanosphere, are tunable at demand frequency by controlling the thickness and the materials of the core and the embedding media. The results reveal that the emitted photons from the hybrid system under consideration are antibunched. Moreover, the antibunching behavior of the emitted photons can be controlled by the geometrical parameters of the system, namely, the thickness of the nanoshell or the radius of the nanosphere, as well as the system's physical parameters including the detuning frequency of the quantum dot transition with respect to the surface plasmon mode, and the Rabi frequency of the driving field. Additionally, the studied system has the potential to be a highly controllable single-photon source.