In this work, a single nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center hosted by a nano-diamond was successfully located inside the gap between two parallel placed silver nano-wires. The strongly confined gap-plasmon mode of this nano-wire structure enhanced the NV-center's spontaneous emission rate by a factor of 8.3 and yielded efficient excitation of the plasmonics mode propagating along the nano-wires. With further optimization such a system based on metallic nano-structures might provide a route to coherent interaction between quantum emitters and single optical modes on a chip scale.
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