Abstract
In 2003 Bergman and Stockman introduced the spaser, a quantum amplifier of surface plasmons by stimulated emission of radiation1. They argued that by exploiting a metal/dielectric composite medium it should be possible to construct a nanodevice, where a strong coherent field is built up in a spatial region much smaller than the wavelength1,2. V-shaped metallic structures, combined with semiconductor quantum dots, were discussed as a possible realization of the spaser1. Here we introduce a further development of the spaser concept. We show that by combining the metamaterial and spaser ideas one can create a narrow-diversion coherent source of electromagnetic radiation that is fuelled by plasmonic oscillations. We argue that a two-dimensional array of a certain class of plasmonic resonators supporting coherent current excitations with high quality factor can act as a planar source of spatially and temporally coherent radiation, which we term a ‘lasing spaser.’
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References
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to acknowledge the financial support of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Counsil (EPSRC) (UK).
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Contributions
The idea of the lasing spaser belongs to N.I.Z. who also wrote the paper. S.L.P. and N.P. performed infrared and near-infrared numerical experiments correspondingly. V.A.F. contributed to the analysis of data.
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Zheludev, N., Prosvirnin, S., Papasimakis, N. et al. Lasing spaser. Nature Photon 2, 351–354 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2008.82
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2008.82
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