Engineering Giant Rabi Splitting via Strong Coupling between Localized and Propagating Plasmon Modes on Metal Surface Lattices: Observation of √N Scaling Rule

We present a strong coupling system realized by coupling the localized surface plasmon mode in individual silver nanogrooves and propagating surface plasmon modes launched by periodic nanogroove arrays with varied periodicities on a continuous silver medium. When the propagating modes are in resonance with the localized mode, we observe a √N scaling of Rabi splitting energy, where N is the number of propagating modes coupled to the localized mode. Here, we confirm a giant Rabi splitting on the order of 450–660 meV (N = 2) in the visible spectral range, and the corresponding coupling strength is 160–235 meV. In some of the strong coupling cases studied by us, the coupling strength is about 10% of the mode energy, reaching the ultrastrong coupling regime.