Gain-Assisted Propagation in a Plasmonic Waveguide at Telecom Wavelength

Abstract

The spatial confinement of surface plasmon polaritons is a promising route for realizing optical on-board interconnects. However, mode losses increase with the confinement factor. To overcome this road block, we investigate propagation assisted by stimulated emission in a polymer strip-loaded plasmonic waveguide doped with nanocrystals. We achieve 27% increase of the propagation length at telecom wavelength corresponding to a 160 cm(-1) optical gain coefficient. Such a configuration is a step toward integrated plasmonic amplifiers.

Dye-Assisted Gain of Strongly Confined Surface Plasmon Polaritons in Silver Nanowires

“…[15][16][17][18][23][24][25] Optical gain has been demonstrated by measuring amplified spontaneous emission for a thin film of gold covered with a fluorescent polymer. 18 Enhancement in the SPP propagation length and partial loss compensation has been achieved for SPPs supported at the interface of a quantum dotdoped polymer strip on a gold film.…”

“…18 Enhancement in the SPP propagation length and partial loss compensation has been achieved for SPPs supported at the interface of a quantum dotdoped polymer strip on a gold film. 17 Complete loss compensation and net output amplification of SPPs in strip waveguides of gold have been realized via an optical gain medium by De Leon and Berini, 19 and more recently by Kena-Cohen et al 20 However, to date there exists no demonstration of optical gain for subwavelength-confined SPPs like those in metallic NWs, despite the fact that plasmon waveguiding in 1D silver and gold NWs is well documented. [8][9][10][11][12][13][26][27][28] Chemically synthesized metal NWs with lateral dimensions of ~100 nm have emerged as an important class of plasmonic waveguides [8][9][10][11]27,28 supporting strongly confined SPPs.…”

“…The values used for '' are consistent with previous studies on gain assisted plasmon propagation. 17 Furthermore, '' was uniform in the z-direction away from the NW surface (with the NW in the xy plane) and all experimental variations along this direction such as pump intensity, which decreases along the light propagation direction due to absorption, and emission quenching, which matters for molecules close to the NW surface, were averaged into an effective imaginary permittivity. Excellent agreement between experiment and simulation could be achieved in this way as further demonstrated in the Supporting Information ( Figure S9).…”

Purcell factor for a point-like dipolar emitter coupled to a two-dimensional plasmonic waveguide

“…Particularly, coupling an emitter to a plasmonic wire shed new light on manipulating single photon source at a strongly subwavelength scale, with applications for quantum information processing [8]. Others promissing applications deal with the realization of integrated plasmonic amplifier [9][10][11]. Highly resolved surface spectroscopy was also pointed out based either on the antenna effect [12] or coupling dipolar emission to an optical fiber via a plasmonic structure [13,14].…”

Quantum coherence-assisted propagation of surface plasmon polaritons

“…Extending coherence effects to plasmonics is often encountered with sever challenges like ultrafast (1-10 fs) relaxation time scale of the surface plasmons (SP) and large intrinsic losses [6]. These road blocks limit the realization of SPP based practical optical devices.Amplification of localized SP and SPP using gain medium like quantum dots(QDs) has gained interests due to its ability to compensate the energy dissipation limits [7][8][9][10][11]. Unfortunately the gain provided by active medium is not always sufficient due to impractical requirements [12,13] or competing processes like amplified spontaneous emission of SPP(ASESPP) which may limit the gain available for loss compensation [14].…”