Photon bunching of the nonlinear photoluminescence emitted by plasmonics metals

In this report, we investigate the statistical temporal distribution of nonlinear upconverted photoluminescence emitted by gold and silver nanostructures excited by focused near-infrared laser pulses. We systematically observe a clear signature of photon bunching regardless of the nano-object’s geometry, material’s crystalline arrangement, and electronic band structure. The similarity of the data obtained across very different plasmonic objects confirms that these types of nonlinear radiation share a common chaotic origin and result from a collection of emitters. The correlation of photons at a picosecond time scale released by nanoscale nonlinear sources of broadband radiation may be used in plasmonic devices to develop new data temporal and spatial processing functionalities.