Plasmonic amplification and suppression in nanowaveguide coupled to gain-assisted high-quality plasmon resonances

Abstract

We study transmission in a nano waveguide coupled to high-quality plasmon resonances for which the metal loss is overcompensated by gain. The on-resonance transmission can vary widely from lower than −20 dB to higher than 20 dB for a range of gain coefficient. A reversible transition between the high-quality amplification and the suppression can be induced by a quite small change of gain coefficient for a moderately increased distance between the waveguide and the resonator. It is expected that in practice a small change of gain coefficient can be made by flexibly controlling pumping rate or utilizing nonlinear gain. Additionally, based on the frequency-dependant model for gain-transition susceptibility, it is shown that the wide variation of the on-resonance transmission can also be observed for defferent detuning of the gain-transition line-center. Such a widely controllable on-resonance transmission is promising for applications such as well-controlled lumped amplification of surface plasmon-polariton as well as plasmonic switching.