Plasmonic leaky-mode lasing in active semiconductor nanowires

Leaky modes are below-cutoff waveguide modes that lose part of their energy to the continuum of radiation modes during propagation. In photonic nanowire lasers, leaky modes have to compete with almost lossless above-cutoff modes and are therefore usually prevented from crossing the lasing threshold. The situation is drastically different in plasmonic nanowire systems where the above-cutoff plasmonic modes are very lossy because of their strong confinement to the metal surface. Due to gain guiding, the threshold gain of the hybrid electric leaky mode does not increase strongly with reduced wire diameter and stays below that of all other modes, making it possible to observe leaky-mode lasing. Plasmonic ZnO nanowire lasers operating in the gain-guided regime could be used as coherent sources of surface plasmon polaritons at the nanoscale or as surface plasmon emitting diodes with an emission angle that depends on the nanowire diameter and the color of the surface plasmon polariton.