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Spasers explained

Nature Photonics volume 2, pages 327–329 (2008)Cite this article

The spaser is a proposed nanoscale source of optical fields that is being investigated in a number of leading laboratories around the world. If realized, spasers could find a wide range of applications, including nanoscale lithography, probing and microscopy.

Nano-optics is now undergoing a period of explosive growth where new ideas, developments and impressive results appear literally on a daily basis. It is concerned with the science of concentrating optical energy into regions with subwavelength dimensions (typically tens of nanometres). Yet despite all this progress, there is still the need for a coherent, intense, ultrafast (with pulse durations down to a few femtoseconds), source of optical energy concentrated to nanoscale areas, similar to the laser but on a much smaller scale. In 2003, David Bergman and I proposed such a source that is based on surface plasmons — the so-called spaser1 (short for surface plasmon amplification by stimulated emission of radiation) — and researchers are now working to develop and exploit this idea. For example, Nikolay Zheludev and colleagues present their latest ideas regarding spasers on page 351 of this issue2.

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Figure 1: The spasing mechanism.
Figure 2: The electric field provided by the spaser described in ref. 1.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Mark I. Stockman is in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, Georgia State University, Atlanta, Georgia 30302, USA. mstockman@gsu.edu,

    Mark I. Stockman

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  1. Mark I. Stockman
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Stockman, M. Spasers explained. Nature Photon 2, 327–329 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2008.85

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