Stimulated Anti-Stokes Raman Emission Generated by Gold Nanorod Coated Optical Resonators

Plasmonic nanomaterials and nanostructured substrates have made a significant impact in sensing and imaging due to their ability to improve optical field confinement at interfaces. This improved confinement increases the optical field intensity, enabling numerous nonlinear effects to be revealed. However, one challenge is effectively coupling light into and out of the plasmonic nanomaterial. One approach is to directly integrate the plasmonic nanomaterials onto the surface of light emitting optical devices. In this work, the highly nonlinear complex of organic small molecule functionalized gold nanorods is coated on the surface of optical resonators. The evanescent tail of the optical field circulating inside the resonator directly interacts with the nanoparticle complex, creating a hybridized plasmon-whispering gallery mode. Due to the strong field localization by the nanorods and the large circulating power within the resonator, Stimulated Anti-Stokes Raman Scattering is generated with only 14 mW of input power, which is a 4-fold reduction as compared to previous work.