Unusual scaling laws for plasmonic nanolasers beyond the diffraction limit

Abstract

Plasmonic nanolasers are a new class of amplifiers that generate coherent light well below the diffraction barrier bringing fundamentally new capabilities to biochemical sensing, super-resolution imaging, and on-chip optical communication. However, a debate about whether metals can enhance the performance of lasers has persisted due to the unavoidable fact that metallic absorption intrinsically scales with field confinement. Here, we report plasmonic nanolasers with extremely low thresholds on the order of 10 kW cm−2 at room temperature, which are comparable to those found in modern laser diodes. More importantly, we find unusual scaling laws allowing plasmonic lasers to be more compact and faster with lower threshold and power consumption than photonic lasers when the cavity size approaches or surpasses the diffraction limit. This clarifies the long-standing debate over the viability of metal confinement and feedback strategies in laser technology and identifies situations where plasmonic lasers can have clear practical advantage.

Markov model of quantum fluctuations at the transition to lasing of semiconductor nanolasers

“…Regardless of the application and due to their ultrasmall size, nanolasers have unique advantages for this type of requirement as low consumption becomes an essential need. Their realization relies historically on semiconductor technologies based on heterostructures [1,2], but was extended recently to spasers [3] whose plasmonic effects allow resonant cavities of a volume much lower than λ 3 , with λ the wavelength of operation in vacuum [4][5][6]. Because of these small ultimate sizes, only a few individual emitters can be involved in a single device, which results in a very small number of photons emitted and an increasing importance of the fluctuations due to the quantum nature of processes, either optical or electrical.…”

Active Nanophotonics

“…where   QQ ) limits. Since the typical emission spectrum of a gain material (dyes, QDs) is usually ~10 nm and 12 res~1 0 10 Q  , in nanophotonics we usually deal with the bad resonator case and, therefore, the Purcell factor tot F can be defined as res eff / QV [143]. In turn, in the good resonator limit (disk cavity, defect in a photonic crystal, etc.…”

“…A similar structure (CdS square on top of an Au substrate) has been comprehensively studied in Ref. [143] and compared to the same but placed on SiO2 substrate (photonic nanolaser). It has been experimentally demonstrated that the Au nanolasers have unusual scaling laws allowing them to be more compact and faster with lower power consumption when their cavity size approaches or surpasses the diffraction limit, whereas the photonic nanolasers do not demonstrate such a performance.…”

Sb2Te3 topological insulator: surface plasmon resonance and application in refractive index monitoring

“…Hua Lu, 1, * Siqing Dai, 1 Zengji Yue, 2 Yicun Fan, 1 Huachao Cheng, 1 Jianglei Di, 1 Dong Mao, 1 Enpu Li, 1 and Jianlin Zhao 1 Surface plasmons (SPs), light-driven oscillation of free electrons along the conductor-dielectric interface, play a crucial role in current development of optical physics and functional devices due to the remarkable capabilities of confining light at the subwavelength scale, enhancing the near-field intensity, and overcoming the diffraction limit of light. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14] Over the past two decades, numerous unusual optical phenomena were observed in metal-based plasmonic systems, such as extraordinary optical transmission, [15] plasmonic guiding, [3] plasmonic resonance, [16] Optically-triggered memory effect, [6] meta-holography, [7] Raman scattering, [8] optical activity, [9] nonlinear enhancement, [10,17] plasmonic trapping, [11] phase manipulation, [18] plasmon-induced transparency, [19,20] quantum plasmonics, [21] and plasmonic focusing. [22,23] Based on these plasmonic responses, a large number of optical functionalities were proposed and investigated, for example nanolasers, [12,24] holographic imaging,…”