Design of Plasmon Lasers with Engineered Emission Characteristics

Guan, Jun

doi:https://doi.org/10.21985/n2-zkzn-tw96

Work

Design of Plasmon Lasers with Engineered Emission Characteristics

Public

Download PDF

Download All Files (.zip)

Miniaturized lasers are important for fundamental studies of light-matter interactions and applications in on-chip photonic integration. Plasmonic nanoparticle lattices supporting surface lattice resonances can provide optical feedback for directional lasing emission at room temperature. This thesis focuses on how the design of plasmon cavities can enable engineering of laser emission characteristics. Chapter 1 introduces surface lattice resonances from plasmonic nanoparticle lattices and describes how these optical modes can support nanoscale lasing.Chapter 2 demonstrates quantum dot-plasmon lasers with engineered polarization patterns controllable by near-field coupling of colloidal quantum dots to metal nanoparticles. Conformal coating of CdSe-CdS core-shell quantum dot films on Ag nanoparticle lattices enables the formation of hybrid waveguide-surface lattice resonance modes. The sidebands of these hybrid modes at non-zero wavevectors facilitate directional lasing emission with either radial or azimuthal polarization depending on the thickness of the quantum dot film. Chapter 3 describes how the direction of quantum dot lasing can be engineered by exploiting high-symmetry points in plasmonic nanoparticle lattices. Using waveguide-surface lattice resonances near the Δ point in the Brillouin zone as optical feedback, we achieved lasing from the gain in CdS shells at off-normal emission angles. Changing the periodicity of the plasmonic lattices enables other high-symmetry points (Γ or M) of the lattice to overlap with the QD shell emission, which facilitates tuning of the lasing direction. Chapter 4 describes how the discovery of light-cone surface lattice resonances enables tunable in-plane lasing. Using dye molecules as local dipole emitters to excite the light-cone SLR modes, we experimentally identified high-order Brillouin zone edges by directional, in-plane lasing emission. These results provide insight into nanolaser architectures that can emit at multiple wavelengths and in-plane directions simply by rotating the nanocavity lattice. Chapter 5 reports a plasmonic nanolaser architecture that can produce white-light emission. We designed a laser device based on a mixed dye solution as gain material sandwiched between two Al nanoparticle square lattices of different periodicities. With a combination of three dyes as liquid gain, we realized red, green, and blue lasing for a white-light emission profile.

Creator