Stimulated Raman adiabatic passage as a route to achieving optical control in plasmonics

Optical properties of ensembles of three-level quantum emitters coupled to plasmonic systems are investigated employing a self-consistent model. It is shown that the stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) technique can be successfully adopted to control optical properties of hybrid materials with collective effects present and playing an important role in light-matter interactions. We consider a core-shell nanowire composed of a silver core and a shell of coupled quantum emitters and utilize a STIRAP scheme to control the scattering efficiency of such a system in a frequency and spatially dependent manner. After the STIRAP-induced population transfer to the final state takes place, the core-shell nanowire exhibits two sets of Rabi splittings with Fano line shapes, indicating strong interactions between two different atomic transitions driven by plasmon near-fields.