Asymmetricity in fluorescence peaks of a three level Λ-type quantum emitter placed near a spherical metal nanoparticle

Abstract A generalized master equation is derived here for a hybrid three level Λ-type quantum emitter-metal nanoparticle (MNP) system in the presence of strong external fields. With this new master equation, we show the spectral reshaping of the fluorescence peaks leading to asymmetric peak heights. This asymmetricity is attributed to dressed state-reservoir coupling and strong coherent fields. The coupling of reservoir with dressed states results in different sampling of local density of states (LDOS) of the vacuum field by dressed state transitions, giving different transition probabilities to each peak. We have further explored the directional features of the resonance fluorescence spectrum in the hybrid system. These observations of spectral reshaping in a three-level-MNP system opens new directions for studying tunable electromagnetically induced transparency utilizing ‘tailored vacuum’ in quantum plasmonics.