Large and well-defined Rabi splitting in a semiconductor nanogap cavity

We propose a nanogap structure composed of semiconductor nanoparticles forming an optical cavity. The resonant excitation of excitons in the nanoparticles can generate a localized strong light field in the gap region, also called "hot spot". The spectral width of the hot spot is significantly narrow because of the small exciton damping and the dephasing at low temperature, so the semiconductor nanogap structure acts as a high-Q cavity. In addition, the interaction between light and matter at the nanogap is significantly larger than that in a conventional microcavity, because the former has a small cavity-mode volume beyond the diffraction limit. We theoretically demonstrate the large and well-defined vacuum-Rabi splitting of a two-level emitter placed inside the semiconductor nanogap cavity: the Rabi splitting energy of 1.7 meV for the transition dipole moment of the emitter (25 Debye) is about 6.3 times larger than the spectral width. An optical cavity providing such a large and well-defined Rabi splitting is highly suited for studying characteristic features of the cavity quantum electrodynamics and for the development of new applications.