  We present optical investigations of hybrid plasmonic nanosystems consisting
of lithographically defined plasmonic Au-waveguides or beamsplitters on GaAs
substrates coupled to proximal self-assembled InGaAs quantum dots. We designed
a sample structure that enabled us to precisely tune the distance between
quantum dots and the sample surface during nano-fabrication and demonstrated
that non-radiative processes do not play a major role for separations down to
$\sim 10 nm$. A polarized laser beam focused on one end of the plasmonic
nanostructure generates propagating surface plasmon polaritons that, in turn,
create electron-hole pairs in the GaAs substrate during propagation. These free
carriers are subsequently captured by the quantum dots $\sim 25 nm$ below the
surface, giving rise to luminescence. The intensity of the spectrally
integrated quantum dot luminescence is used to image the propagating plasmon
modes. As the waveguide width reduces from $5 \mu m$ to $1 \mu m$, we clearly
observe different plasmonic modes at the remote waveguide end, enabling their
direct imaging in real space. This imaging technique is applied to a plasmonic
beamsplitter facilitating the determination of the splitting ratio between the
two beamsplitter output ports as the interaction length $L_i$ is varied. A
splitting ratio of $50:50$ is observed for $L_i\sim 9\pm1 \mu m$ and $1 \mu m$
wide waveguides for excitation energies close to the GaAs band edge. Our
experimental findings are in good agreement with mode profile and finite
difference time domain simulations for both waveguides and beamsplitters.
