title: Hybrid photon-plasmon nanowire lasers.
abstract: Metallic and plasmonic nanolasers have attracted growing interest recently. Plasmonic lasers demonstrated so far operate in hybrid photon-plasmon modes in transverse dimensions, rendering it impossible to separate photonic from plasmonic components. Thus only the far-field photonic component can be measured and utilized directly. But spatially separated plasmon modes are highly desired for applications including high-efficiency coupling of single-photon emitters and ultrasensitivity optical sensing. Here, we report a nanowire (NW) laser that offers subdiffraction-limited beam size and spatially separated plasmon cavity modes. By near-field coupling a high-gain CdSe NW and a 100 nm diameter Ag NW, we demonstrate a hybrid photon-plasmon laser operating at 723 nm wavelength at room temperature, with a plasmon mode area of 0.008λ(2). This device simultaneously provides spatially separated photonic far-field output and highly localized coherent plasmon modes, which may open up new avenues in the fields of integrated nanophotonic circuits, biosensing, and quantum information processing.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Modern Optical Instrumentation, Department of Optical Engineering, Zhejiang University , Hangzhou 310027, China.
authors.forename: Xiaoqin
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.forename: Yao
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Xiao
authors.forename: Chao
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Meng
authors.forename: Xining
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Shaoliang
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.forename: Yipei
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Chuanxi
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.forename: Xin
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Guo
authors.forename: C Z
authors.initials: CZ
authors.lastname: Ning
authors.forename: Limin
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Tong
mesh_terms: D015374:Biosensing Techniques; D004867:Equipment Design; D007834:Lasers; D008027:Light; D036103:Nanotechnology / Q000295:instrumentation*; D053770:Nanowires / Q000737:chemistry*; D017785:Photons; D020349:Surface Plasmon Resonance