Nano-optical imaging of exciton-plasmon polaritons in WSe/Au heterostructures.

We report a nano-optical imaging study of exciton-plasmon polaritons (EPPs) in WSe/Au heterostructures with scattering-type scanning near-field optical microscopy (s-SNOM). By mapping the interference fringes of EPPs at various excitation energies, we constructed the dispersion diagram of the EPPs, which shows strong exciton-plasmon coupling with a sizable Rabi splitting energy (∼0.19 eV). Furthermore, we found a sensitive dependence of the polariton wavelength () on WSe thickness (). When is below 40 nm, decreases rapidly with increasing . As reaches 50 nm and above, drops to 210 nm, which is over 4 times smaller than that of the free-space photons. Our simulations indicate that the high spatial confinement of EPPs is due to the strong localization of the polariton field inside WSe. Our work uncovers the transport properties of EPPs and paves the way for future applications of these highly confined polaritons in nanophotonics and optoelectronics.