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Plasmonics

Loss and gain

Providing sufficient gain to overcome loss remains a fundamental challenge for light amplification in miniaturized plasmonic devices. Ongoing research gives hope for a cautious but optimistic outlook.

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Figure 1: Cross-section of an electrically injected surface plasmon amplifier, showing the metallic nanostructure and the internal electric field of a surface plasmon cavity mode (red lines)8,12.

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Correspondence to Rupert F. Oulton.

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Oulton, R. Loss and gain. Nature Photon 6, 219–221 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2012.72

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