Ten years of spasers and plasmonic nanolasers

Shaimaa I Azzam; Alexander V Kildishev; Ren-Min Ma; Cun-Zheng Ning; Rupert Oulton; Vladimir M Shalaev; Mark I Stockman; Jia-Lu Xu; Xiang Zhang

doi:10.1038/s41377-020-0319-7

Ten years of spasers and plasmonic nanolasers

Light Sci Appl. 2020 May 25:9:90. doi: 10.1038/s41377-020-0319-7. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Shaimaa I Azzam^{1

2}, Alexander V Kildishev^{1

2}, Ren-Min Ma^{3

4}, Cun-Zheng Ning^{5

6}, Rupert Oulton⁷, Vladimir M Shalaev^{1

2}, Mark I Stockman⁸, Jia-Lu Xu⁵, Xiang Zhang^{9

10}

Affiliations

¹ School of Electrical & Computer Engineering and Birck Nanotechnology Center, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907 USA.
² Purdue Quantum Science and Engineering Institute, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907 USA.
³ State Key Lab for Mesoscopic Physics and School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing, China.
⁴ Frontiers Science Center for Nano-optoelectronics & Collaborative Innovation Center of Quantum Matter, Beijing, China.
⁵ Department of Electronic Engineering and International Center for Nano-Optoelectronics, Tsinghua University, 100084 Beijing, China.
⁶ School of Electrical, Computer, and Energy Engineering, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287 USA.
⁷ The Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College London, South Kensington, London, SW7 2AZ UK.
⁸ Center for Nano-Optics (CeNO) and Department of Physics and Astronomy, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA 30303 USA.
⁹ Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720 USA.
¹⁰ Faculties of Sciences and Engineering, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.

Abstract

Ten years ago, three teams experimentally demonstrated the first spasers, or plasmonic nanolasers, after the spaser concept was first proposed theoretically in 2003. An overview of the significant progress achieved over the last 10 years is presented here, together with the original context of and motivations for this research. After a general introduction, we first summarize the fundamental properties of spasers and discuss the major motivations that led to the first demonstrations of spasers and nanolasers. This is followed by an overview of crucial technological progress, including lasing threshold reduction, dynamic modulation, room-temperature operation, electrical injection, the control and improvement of spasers, the array operation of spasers, and selected applications of single-particle spasers. Research prospects are presented in relation to several directions of development, including further miniaturization, the relationship with Bose-Einstein condensation, novel spaser-based interconnects, and other features of spasers and plasmonic lasers that have yet to be realized or challenges that are still to be overcome.

Keywords: Lasers, LEDs and light sources; Nanophotonics and plasmonics; Optical materials and structures.

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Review

Abstract

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