Plasmon effects in the two-photon Rabi oscillations in a strongly coupled semiconductor quantum dot–metal nanoshell composite

We theoretically study two-photon Rabi oscillations (TPRO) in a nanocomposite comprising a semiconductor quantum dot (SQD) strongly coupled to a metallic nanoshell (MNS), which undergoes a pulsed excitation. The SQD is modeled as a three-level ladder-like quantum system (ground, one-exciton, and bi-exciton states). Its optical dynamics is described quantum-mechanically within the density matrix formalism framework, while the MNS is treated classically through its frequency-dependent polarizability. We find two effects of the presence of a MNS in close proximity to the SQD: (a) - a sufficient increase of the number of Rabi cycles as compared to the case of an isolated SQD and (b) - incoherent population of the one-exciton state giving rise to the destruction of the TPRO. (paper)