Journal
NATURE NANOTECHNOLOGY
Volume 8, Issue 7, Pages 506-511Publisher
NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
DOI: 10.1038/NNANO.2013.99
Keywords
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Funding
- NSF-MRSEC program at the Materials Research Science and Engineering Center at Northwestern University [DMR-1121262]
- Initiative for Sustainability and Energy at Northwestern (ISEN) Faculty Booster Award
- US Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences [DE-SC0004752]
- ANSER Center, an Energy Frontier Research Center
- DOE [DE-SC0001059]
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Periodic dielectric structures are typically integrated with a planar waveguide to create photonic band-edge modes for feedback in one-dimensional distributed feedback lasers and two-dimensional photonic-crystal lasers(1-4). Although photonic band-edge lasers are widely used in optics and biological applications, drawbacks include low modulation speeds and diffraction-limited mode confinement(5,6). In contrast, plasmonic nanolasers can support ultrafast dynamics and ultrasmall mode volumes(7-9). However, because of the large momentum mismatch between their nanolocalized lasing fields and free-space light, they suffer from large radiative losses and lack beam directionality. Here, we report lasing action from band-edge lattice plasmons in arrays of plasmonic nanocavities in a homogeneous dielectric environment. We find that optically pumped, two-dimensional arrays of plasmonic Au or Ag nanoparticles surrounded by an organic gain medium show directional beam emission (divergence angle <1.5 degrees and linewidth <1.3 nm) characteristic of lasing action in the far-field, and behave as arrays of nanoscale light sources in the near-field. Using a semi-quantum electromagnetic approach to simulate the active optical responses, we show that lasing is achieved through stimulated energy transfer from the gain to the band-edge lattice plasmons in the deep subwavelength vicinity of the individual nanoparticles. Using femtosecond-transient absorption spectroscopy, we verified that lattice plasmons in plasmonic nanoparticle arrays could reach a 200-fold enhancement of the spontaneous emission rate of the dye because of their large local density of optical states.
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