The radiative decay of quantum dot (QD) excitons into surface plasmons in a cylindrical nanowire is investigated theoretically. Maxwells equations with appropriate boundary conditions are solved numerically to obtain the dispersion relations of surfa
ce plasmons. The radiative decay rate of QD excitons is found to be greatly enhanced at certain values of the exciton bandgap. Analogous to the decay of a two-level atom in the photonic crystal, we first point out that such an enhanced phenomenon allows one to examine the non-Markovian dynamics of the QD exciton. Besides, due to the one dimensional propagating feature of nanowire surface plasmons, remote entangled states can be generated via super-radiance and may be useful in future quantum information processing.
