Paper
20 September 2011 Room temperature semiconductor plasmon laser
Author Affiliations +
Abstract
Plasmon lasers are a new class of coherent optical amplifiers that generate and sustain light well below its diffraction limit [1-4]. Their intense, coherent and confined optical fields can enhance significantly light-matter interactions and bring fundamentally new capabilities to bio-sensing, data storage, photolithography and optical communications [5-11]. However, metallic plasmon laser cavities generally exhibit both high metal and radiation losses, limiting the operation of plasmon lasers to cryogenic temperatures, where sufficient gain can be attained. Here, we present room temperature semiconductor sub-diffraction limited laser by adopting total internal reflection of surface plasmons to mitigate the radiation loss, while utilizing hybrid semiconductor-insulator-metal nano-squares for strong confinement with low metal loss. High cavity quality factors, approaching 100, along with strong λ/20 mode confinement lead to enhancements of spontaneous emission rate by up to 18 times. By controlling the structural geometry we reduce the number of cavity modes to achieve single mode lasing.
© (2011) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.
Ren-Min Ma, Rupert F. Oulton, Volker J. Sorger, Guy Bartal, and Xiang Zhang "Room temperature semiconductor plasmon laser", Proc. SPIE 8096, Plasmonics: Metallic Nanostructures and Their Optical Properties IX, 80960C (20 September 2011); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.893223
Advertisement
Advertisement
RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS
Get copyright permission  Get copyright permission on Copyright Marketplace
KEYWORDS
Plasmons

Cadmium sulfide

Semiconductor lasers

Metals

Semiconductors

Reflection

Surface plasmons

RELATED CONTENT

Exploiting plasmonics for THz and infrared sensing
Proceedings of SPIE (May 21 2014)
Plasmonic ring laser cavity with tiny footprint
Proceedings of SPIE (March 14 2013)
Cross-section curvature effect in plasmonic ring lasers
Proceedings of SPIE (September 11 2013)
Photoconductively excited plasmonic modulator-switch
Proceedings of SPIE (September 30 2015)
Semiconductor plasmon laser
Proceedings of SPIE (September 10 2010)
Nanoscale surface-emitting semiconductor plasmon lasers
Proceedings of SPIE (August 28 2008)

Back to Top