Long-Range Plasmon-Assisted Energy Transfer between Fluorescent Emitters.

We demonstrate plasmon-assisted energy transfer between fluorophores located at distances up to 7  μm on the top of a thin silver film. Thanks to the strong confinement and large propagation length of surface plasmon polaritons, the range of the energy transfer is almost 2 orders of magnitude larger than the values reported in the literature so far. The parameters driving the energy transfer range are thoroughly characterized and are in very good agreement with theoretically expected values.