New features of excitonic emission in metal nanoparticle/semiconductor quantum dot nanosystem

We study theoretically the excitonic emission properties of a hybrid nanosystem composed of a spherical metal nanoparticle (NP) and a spherical quantum dot (QD). We show that electromagnetic field (EMF) emitted by a single QD has only dipole, quadrupole, and octupole components, i.e., QD cannot in principle be regarded as an oscillating point dipole, which emits infinite series of multipoles. This leads to a substantial deviation of the characteristics of QD excitonic emission from the emission characteristics of point dipole (molecular fluorophore) located in a vicinity of metal NP at small interparticle distances. The observed fluorescence spectra of the CdTe QD/Ag NP nanostructure are found to be in good agreement with the calculated ones.