Loss
compensation in plasmonic nanostructures gives a possibility
to avoid problems with strong absorption in the metal and design deep-subwavelength
optical components for practical applications. At the same time, pumping
required for creation of population inversion produces a huge amount
of waste heat, which can significantly increase the device temperature
and degrade its performance. Eventually, self-heating is becoming
a severe problem for active plasmonics, since it limits the maximum
achievable optical gain. Here we report a comprehensive study of heat
generation and transport in electrically pumped active plasmonic waveguides,
in which the SPP propagation losses are compensated by gain in the
adjacent semiconductor and present a strategy for their efficient
cooling.