About nonhermiticity in plasmonic dimers

[Dan Zar]

My questions are related to the article

"Self-hybridization within non-Hermitian localized plasmonic systems"

http://sci-hub.tw/10.1038/s41567-017-0023-6
I am aware that within the nanophotonics field, the use of precisely engineered nanoparticles in space and time leads to arrays in the form of nanoparticle dimers, oligomers, etc.. Some of these ordered arrays can even be described (http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/nl803811g) through hybridization models. These species exhibit various exotic optical response and intrinsic properties which are slightly different than in the single nanoparticle or disordered array, analogs.

I would like to understand the article I mentioned from an experimentalist point of view.

My only perception without having thoroughly gone through the article due to time limitations is the fact that they observe self hybridization whis is seen as some sort of overlap in their EESL spectrum, however, I do not understand how this behavior arises from non-hermiticity and what that actually means. Is this going to change the world? Thank you very much for somebody who can explain this to a chemist.

 

[azntoon]

No, this article does not change the world. The article discusses a phenomenon in which plasmonic systems in non-Hermitian localized systems display self-hybridization behavior, which is an overlap in their EESL spectrum. This overlap is due to the fact that non-Hermitian systems have complex eigenvalues. This results in the system having more than one energy level, which can lead to the overlap observed in the EESL spectrum. In other words, when multiple energy levels are present in the system, they can interact with each other, leading to the self-hybridization effect.