Coupling of plasmonic nanoparticles to their environments in the context of van der Waals-Casimir interactions
We present experiments in which the interaction of a single gold nanoparticle with glass substrates or with another gold particle can be tuned by in situ control of their separations using scanning probe technology. We record the plasmon resonances of the coupled systems as a function of the polarization of the incident field and the particle position. The distinct spectral changes of the scattere