We introduce compact wavelength-scale slit-based structures for coupling free space light into metal-dielectric-metal (MDM) subwave-length plasmonic waveguides. We first show that for a single slit structure the coupling efficiency is limited by a trade-off between the light power coupled into the slit, and the transmission of the slit-MDM waveguide junction. We next consider a two-section slit...

Semiconductor quantum dots (QD) have attracted considerable interest during the past years as possible candidates for quantum information processing. Due to the confinement potential in such structures, the density of states in a single QD is discrete. If the states are well separated in energy the coupling to the environment is expected to be smaller, implying that coherence is maintained duri...