Cavity-free plasmonic nanolasing enabled by dispersionless stopped light

Tim Pickering, Joachim M. Hamm, A. Freddie Page, Sebastian Wuestner and Ortwin Hess ()
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Tim Pickering: The Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, Prince Consort Road, London SW7 2AZ, UK
Joachim M. Hamm: The Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, Prince Consort Road, London SW7 2AZ, UK
A. Freddie Page: The Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, Prince Consort Road, London SW7 2AZ, UK
Sebastian Wuestner: The Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, Prince Consort Road, London SW7 2AZ, UK
Ortwin Hess: The Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, Prince Consort Road, London SW7 2AZ, UK

Nature Communications, 2014, vol. 5, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract When light is brought to a standstill, its interaction with gain media increases dramatically due to a singularity in the density of optical states. Concurrently, stopped light engenders an inherent and cavity-free feedback mechanism, similar in effect to the feedback that has been demonstrated and exploited in large-scale disordered media and random lasers. Here we study the spatial, temporal and spectral signatures of lasing in planar gain-enhanced nanoplasmonic structures at near-infrared frequencies and show that the stopped-light feedback mechanism allows for nanolasing without a cavity. We reveal that in the absence of cavity-induced feedback, the subwavelength lasing mode forms dynamically as a phase-locked superposition of quasi dispersion-free waveguide modes. This mechanism proves remarkably robust against interface roughness and offers a new route towards nanolasing, the experimental realization of ultra-thin surface emitting lasers, and cavity-free active quantum plasmonics.

Date: 2014
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DOI: 10.1038/ncomms5972

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