Gold nanorods and nanospheroids for enhancing spontaneous emission

Abstract

We compute the radiative decay rate and the quantum efficiency for an emitter coupled to gold nanorods and nanospheroids using the body- of-revolution finite-difference time-domain method. We study these quantities as a function of the nanoparticle aspect ratio and volume, showing that large enhancements can be achieved with realistic parameters. Moreover, we find that nanospheroids exhibit better performances than nanorods for applications in the visible and near-infrared spectral range.