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.
Highlights
Plasmonic nanolasers are a new class of amplifiers that generate coherent light well below the diffraction barrier bringing fundamentally new capabilities to biochemical sensing, superresolution imaging, and on-chip optical communication
In this article, we report room temperature plasmonic nanolasers with extremely low threshold on the order of 10 kW cm−2 corresponding to a pump density in the range of modern laser diodes
We report a room temperature plasmonic nanolaser at extremely low thresholds on the order of 10 kW cm−2 corresponding to a pumping density in the range of modern laser diodes
Summary
Plasmonic nanolasers are a new class of amplifiers that generate coherent light well below the diffraction barrier bringing fundamentally new capabilities to biochemical sensing, superresolution imaging, and on-chip optical communication. Accelerated spontaneous emission consumes excited carriers faster, making population inversion for gain more difficult, raising the threshold[35,36,37,38,41] Since both metal confinement and Purcell effect have arguably both positive and negative influences on nanolaser performance, fundamental questions emerge concerning the advantages of metal confinement and feedback strategies in laser technology: Are plasmonic nanolasers intrinsically high threshold due to the parasitic metal loss? While the general trend of higher threshold for higher Purcell effect is observed for both plasmonic and photonic lasers, plasmonic lasers have significantly reduced thresholds compared to photonic devices for the same recombination lifetime when the cavity size approaches or surpasses the diffraction limit This suggests that both sides of this longstanding debate are valid with the actual physics being far from trivial
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