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Plasmonic lasers

On the fast track

Nature Physics volume 10, pages 799–800 (2014)Cite this article

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Plasmons offer the tantalizing prospect of accelerated light–matter interactions. Accelerated dynamics has now been observed in a hybrid plasmonic laser or spaser, capable of producing pulses on ultrafast timescales.

In an era of nanotechnology and ultrafast information processing, the Olympic motto 'faster, higher, stronger' might be better phrased 'faster, smaller, stronger'. Indeed, it seems that size really does matter, as smaller components enable billions of logic elements to be packed into compact, lightweight processors. But equally important is the temporal dimension: our insatiable appetite for information at the click of a button demands that devices become ever faster. The ultimate operation speed, currently pinned to all-optical systems1, can only be achieved by overcoming the wavelength barrier for miniaturization. Now, as they report in Nature Physics, Themistoklis Sidiropoulos and colleagues2 have come up with a way of pulling this off with plasmonic nanolasers.

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Figure 1: Schematic of an ultrafast plasmonic nanolaser (spaser).

References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Mark Stockman is at the Center for Nano-Optics and the Physics and Astronomy Department at Georgia State University, Atlanta, Georgia 30302, USA,

    Mark Stockman

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  1. Mark Stockman
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Correspondence to Mark Stockman.

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Stockman, M. On the fast track. Nature Phys 10, 799–800 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys3127

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