A surface-emitting distributed-feedback plasmonic laser

A surface-plasmon polariton (SPP) waveguide, which is composed of a high-index decoupling layer for the excitation of surface emission, a metal grating layer to achieve coherent optical feedback and guiding of SPP waves as well as a dye polymer medium for the light amplification, is proposed to achieve surface lasing emission. Finite-difference time-domain calculation is performed to design and optimize the lasing performance of the SPP waveguide. It is found that the corresponding laser threshold can be lower than 700 cm(-1) and the quality factor can be larger than 700. (C) 2009 American Institute of Physics. [doi: 10.1063/1.3247965]